Unfinished Business
by wildechilde17
Summary: Sometimes you leave things a little late, but just give him a second to clear his head. A mission goes wrong and Clint just needs more time.
1. Chapter 1

Just one second okay. One second to catch my breath, he thinks.

Then he takes the breath and in the place of relief there is crimson scalpel shaped pain. It is somewhere to the right of his spine and then shooting upwards. It started belligerently and it doesn't seem content to stop anytime soon.

He feels his knees hit the ground.

His TAC vest specially designed so he could twist easily with a bow in his hands is far too tight in all the wrong places and that really shouldn't be possible, it was fine this morning wasn't it? _Well how the fuck did this happen?_

Hey there's Natasha, he thinks happily, a momentary distraction from wondering why he is so cold and why he's on the floor.

They were fighting weren't they? They'd been fighting this morning, or was it yesterday morning? She'd turned off her comms because he'd thought the best way to resolve the fight was to sing off key down their secure line. Maybe resolve was too strong a word. Win the fight was more correct, win the fight was more like Clint Barton. You learn a lot in circuses how to never miss, why you should never eat the first corn dogs of the day and that the smart kids hate clowns but emotional maturity ain't one of them.

Why is he on the floor? He should get up Nat's looking upset with him. _Arggghh, fuck that hurts_. Can't catch my breath, he thinks again. Tasha's got bloody nail scissors in her hands, blood that looks like her curls on tiny points of silver. Isn't he supposed to be on a roof in the snow right now? Isn't he supposed to be watching her back? Where's his bow? He can feel his arm guards press into the cold skin of his forearm caught beneath him, where's his bow?

There's a ringing in his ears but it's okay because it looks like Tasha's forgiven him for whatever they were fighting about. She's leaning over him the light separating each perfect bloodshot wave of her hair. _Christ Tash you always find the worst possible places to push, don't you?_ _Let go that hurts like a motherfucker!_ He arches his back trying to pull away from her grip.

_Oh_, he had been on the roof. He'd seen her through the window, her knives and that dress laid out on the bed, her perfectly deadly face through his sights. He was on the roof and now he was here and there was something important, some important reason he was in Natasha's hotel room. Not Natasha's room no it was Emilija's room. Emilija who was meeting their mark for drinks in an hour. Emilija who wasn't Natasha, not at all, not even a little bit. Emilija who Natasha had been putting on when he watched her through his sights and sang off key until finally she raised one elegant eyebrow and tapped her almost invisible ear piece off.

He'd been shitty with her for days, yeah he could admit it. When he got shitty he got sarcastic and nasty and Nat, well, she got cold and quiet. Oh and Clinton Francis Barton, the Amazing Hawkeye and the man with a hundred and one abandonment issues just couldn't let it go. No response is dangerous, no response means you could be gone in the morning, no response means he just keeps pushing until there's a reaction, any reaction. A reaction tells him what to do even if it's a bad reaction. Silence tells him nothing. That was what the singing was about. He could actually sing, they both knew it, but singing off key right into her ear piece rooftops away in the sound dampening snow that was a targeted kind of torture meant to push her as far as she would go.

It hadn't started there. That wasn't really why he was here now.

Natasha pulls her hand away from his back and it is red. There was so much damn red everywhere. She swears in Russian and then in English for good measure. Through the buzz he can hear her in an almost whisper "Where are you?" Still here, he wants to say but he has no voice. No, she wasn't talking to him he can hear her through the static of his own comm she is talking to SHEILD.

She hadn't finished dressing; she is still in a robe. That bastard had been early. That bastard had known something, he was early and he'd come with a purpose and back up. The greasy, black t-shirt and suit wearing bastard, the balding, gold chain wearing bastard had shown up early and he'd almost missed it. SHEILD definitely had missed it, he hoped Nat was going to tear them new Black Widow style asshole when they got back to the helicarrier.

Natasha is pushing the fabric of her robe into his right side with such force he wants to curse her name.

She'd shut off her comms because he was being a shit. He was being a shit because he couldn't stand her silence. She was silent because he'd been biting at her for days. He had been attacking her at every moment because…

Once a threadbare lion tamer had told him the lionesses could smell fear. He'd said that the key to working them was to be without fear. The key, he had found out not that much later, was to feed them, a lot and regularly. But he never forgot some creatures can smell fear on you and fear makes them attack. Natasha was and had always been a lioness. If the best defence was a good offence then Clint was playing to win.

The light in the hotel room is getting brighter. No, one spot is getting brighter above him and everything else seems to grow darker. _It is his blood on her hands isn't it?_

When she'd shut off her earpiece he'd smirked, stretching his neck for one tiny moment before returning to his visual. He saw them the douchebag and his steroid based cronies an hour early and throwing off body language that made warning bells sound off like klaxons in his brain.

Clint hadn't been scared much since he was a kid. Not since drunken adult fists and then strangers with hands in the night in homes that weren't really his, not since running away to join the circus. Sure there'd been times when things had gone wrong, when adrenalin had pumped its way through every blood vessel in his body and narrowed his vision and slowed down time. But truly scared, those moments when you knew you had no ability to change the outcome, that everything was out of your control, those had been few and far between since they'd put a bow in his hands and let him tear at his fingertips and strain muscles practicing day after day.

Natasha is crying, he is pretty sure Natasha is crying as he arches away from the pressure of her robe and the way she is pulling the buckles of his TAC vest apart. He catches her eyes, green and swimming. He wants to say, 'Don't cry Nat I've got no information to give up, none that you don't already have anyway. No need for the ticks of your trade.' _That would have been a lie though wouldn't it._

Natasha Romanoff could look after herself. She was the most graceful weapon he had ever seen. She was an arrow brought to life. But they were early and she didn't know they were early because she had turned off her comms because he'd been being a shit. They knew she wasn't Emilija and they were looking to make a beautifully violent point. Her knives were on the bed and she was in a robe and she was every bit as fatal naked as she was armed and armoured but he couldn't take that chance.

She is talking but the swarm of the bees in his ears are making it hard to decode and he feels too tired to read her lips. He closes his eyes. Just need to rest my eyes Tasha.

"Barton!" he hears that, she all but screamed it. His eyes snap open but that light is too bright now, far too bright to look at. She is tilting his face back with fingers pressed into his carotid leaving red streaks across his jaw. It's blood, his blood on her hands. Yeah, that's right one of her knives, he hadn't seen tweedledum palm it from the bed and then while he was busy sending tweedledee back to the least fashionable end of hell… The Black Widow had broken the ugly bastard's neck but he'd got in one good thrust.

She was magnificent when she was pretending to be scared. She could raise her heart rate, widen her eyes and let the colour drain from her skin, alabaster against the dark red of her hair, the glitter of perspiration at her temples. Small and delicate she made you feel powerful and for a certain kind of man that was all it took. He'd always had to fight the instinct to protect her that's what it did to him. Little Natalia or Yelena or Marta or Eva so very scared and weak until the moment you realised you were about to die.

He is about to die. She is magnificent and he is about to die.

_No. He hadn't told her yet. No. He couldn't go yet he had to tell her_.

_Tasha, you remember that op in Batman in Turkey. The op I spent talking like Michael Keaton's Batman 'cause I couldn't believe there really was a place called Batman and you gave me nothing. No quirk of the lips, no raise of the eyebrows and no kick in the shins. I didn't stop even when the cut on your forehead wouldn't stop bleeding. I was so sure you'd give up then and react. Coulson told me to knock it off when we got to the military base. I couldn't believe you'd let it go on for so long. You were impenetrable and awe inspiring. You had no fucking clue what I was doing. You thought I had a sore throat_.

_No not yet. I don't care how fucking cold it gets in here or how much I want to fall asleep. I've got to tell her._

_I remember the first time we danced, really danced, not the dance that is every fight we've ever had. I remember how the silk at the small of your back felt and how you fit into my arms like you'd been designed that way and no amount of thinking about the blade strapped to your upper thigh or how often I'd seen you dance with other men just like this made it any less amazing. I hate dancing. I hate wearing those monkey suits and pretending to be something I'm not. I love dancing with you._

She is shaking her head but aw hell she looks furious. The kind of anger that shuts her down and make her face so carefully blank but if you knew where to look in her eyes you could see it the place where Natasha Romanoff calculated the myriad of ways to end your life. Clint knows where to look.

In Russian and then Hungarian and English and French she is telling him he is an idiot, a moron, questioning his genetic heritage. She presses harder on the robe damp with redness and he hears his own groan, weak and guttural. The room is going white like some asshole had turned on a damn dry ice machine. He can see her eyes though. Those eyes, such green eyes, you never saw eyes like that.

_Tash, I've been wanting to kiss you for so long I'm not even sure when it began. You're too smart for me. You've probably noticed that I watch your lips when you talk or the way my pupils dilate or some shit. I bet you know already. You're the spy after all. I'm just the soldier. I wish I could ask if you're glad that I've controlled myself this long or disappointed without risking the rejection. We've kissed, it's not like we haven't kissed. Sometimes it's the best way to get out of a sticky situation and sometimes its cover. You remember Berlin though? Say you do Tasha. It would be a stab wound to the right side if you couldn't remember Berlin, laugh Tash that was a joke. Berlin, up against a wall in Alexanderplatz you kissed me because we were being tailed and I kissed back like I meant it. I meant it._

She's pushes her knee under his head and the hand that's not applying pressure to his back is over his heart. She'll leave a bloody hand print but then it isn't like she hasn't done that before. She's saying something, something that sounds like a prayer. Natasha doesn't pray. Natasha doesn't believe in a caring God or an ineffable plan. Natasha believes in ledgers and debts to be repaid. Natasha believes in imposing her own sense of order on a cruel and chaotic world. But Natasha's asking someone for forgiveness he can make out that much.

_Nat, look at me again please baby. I know you'd kill me for calling you something demeaning like baby. I think I'm done. I need more time but I don't think I'm going to get it. But whatever happens next I'll wait for you. I'm not leaving you without a fight. I'm not as good as you at hand to hand and I don't know where my bow is but I'll fight whatever the fuck comes for me. You and me, I'm waiting because you and me, we work better together. We are better together. Tell me you saw that too. Tell me you knew all along I was pushing all your buttons because I was scared. Tell me you know I was in a foul mood because I hate losing you into the Emilijas and Nadias and Francoises. Tell me you know Tasha. I'm sorry._

He closes his eyes feeling everything start to grow numb but he feels her hand on his chest clench into a fist and her cry both angry and helpless. There are noises and movement and she is pulled away from him. A voice he thinks he recognised speaks, "Agent Barton it's time to go."

He swings out with a heavy arm and little strength; he is not leaving Tasha without a fight. But there is only silence and coldness as unconsciousness takes him


	2. Chapter 2

Quinjet, not the muffled noise of the cockpit but the strange reverberation of the cabin, open and less cushioned. They couldn't have brought it down in the city no matter how much of a shit storm the op had turned into, so Helicopter, then Quinjet. His eyes would not open. _Natasha, was Natasha safe? Was she on the jet?_ And there is that pain that tells him muscles have been opened and left torn apart, the constant ache and the pulse of fire that is nerve pain and then black, cold and silent again.

X. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. X.

"I see no reason why this must be dealt with now Sir."

"Agent Romanoff you know as well as I do that debriefing should be carried out as close to the mission outcome as possible to retain clarity of recall."

"My recall will be as accurate as it has always been once Agent Barton is in surgery." A pause, the sound of intake ducts and bulkheads pinging with temperature variations.

"Natasha." He knows that voice and he knows the way her name was said, the tone that is at once understanding and warning. It is a voice that walked tightropes.

X. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. X.

That noise has to be wind, the rush of air from the jets, airflow over the sleek outer shell of the helicarrier hull. There was other noises too the roll of casters in wheels against tarmac and the uniform double timed march of medics. He fancies he can pick out the sound of Natasha's footsteps among them but that couldn't be true. Natasha made no sound when she walked. Natasha glided unless she was someone else.

The sudden absence of sound means smooth floors and no wind.

"Romanoff! What the hell happened out there?" The Doppler effect of the gurney flying past the authoritative demand.

"As I have said to Agent Coulson I will comply with the debriefing procedures when Agent Barton is in surgery Agent Hill. He is my handler and until Director Fury sees fit to place you in that role you can wait for his report along with the rest of SHIELD." She was no longer beside him but he can hear the cool contempt in her measured tone on her final word. If he could just open his eyes and twist himself back towards her the look on Hill's face would be priceless.

X. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. X.

It is cold and it smells like the kind of antiseptic that only comes in gallon bottles of Pepto-Bismol pink. Medical bay then, you'd think with all the technology and funding at the hands of this secret government organisation they could make antiseptic that smelt like Chanel no. 5 or a good bourbon.

"Give him another lot of whole blood, what's his BP?" He didn't care to listen to the clipped medical jargon from the voices closest to him. He feels himself straining against the darkness to pick out the sound of Natasha.

There is the sudden pain of his weight thrown off and his own muscles pulling to steady him as he is lifted on sheets, then down again on to cold metal.

"They're prepping him now." Coulson through glass. Clint can't tell who he is informing. This time unconsciousness comes at the point of a needle.

X. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. X.

_Nope, too much pain. Fuck this I'm going back to sleep._

X. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. X.

"He should be coming round soon."

"Yes. They have kept me informed." Natasha's voice has smooth low notes like it had been aged in oak barrels. Could it be a virtue of her native Russian even though she spoke English with no hint of an accent? No there was never an accent unless Natasha wished there to be one.

"The Director isn't happy with your report. He says there are glaring gaps in the provided information."

"I suspect that is not how the Director phrased it."

"You suspect correctly. You found time to get cleaned up?"

"His surgery did not require me to pace the room like an expectant father for it to be successful."

"Yet you were determined to stay by his side."

"He is my partner, Coulson. I should be there if he wakes."

"Yes," calm and pleasant came the voice next to Natasha's and yet if you listen carefully enough you can hear the undercurrent of humor born of knowing people all too well.

"Your agreements always come with addendums," Natasha sounds bored by the innuendo.

"Should Barton choose to elaborate on his blood loss induced requests for you to both "dance like you used to" I suppose it would not be uninformative to be in close proximity?"

"For all we know he was making that request of you Sir." He can picture her face unchanging except for the slight tug on the corners of her full lips and a glint in her eyes. There is a small sound of weight being shifted in an uncomfortable chair.

"I believe Barton knows better than to request that and as far as I know he and I have never been together in Alexanderplatz."

"It would be all too easy to read things into the ramblings of a gravely injured man," it would be so easy for Natasha to end the conversation there but there is something too soft in her tone.

"Yes it would." Clint can almost hear the sardonic raise of Coulson's eyebrows. There is silence again only interrupted by the sound of monitors beeping their redundant rhythm of 'still alive, still alive, still alive.'

"He's awake."

"His eyes are still closed. His heart rate's unchanged."

"You have my file and you doubt my ability to tell when a man is faking unconsciousness?" Coulson does not answer. Clint assumes that he has yielded to her superior argument in his usual minimalist fashion.

Something sharp flicks his ear. Instinctually he reaches for the new and painful sensation but is hindered by the lines of his IV. _Damn Natasha and her super-secret spying skill set_.

"Smooth move Hawkeye," she says quietly at his side. He feels his lip pull into a tired smirk. It's barely possible to get his eyes open, the pain, the drugs, and the blood loss all conspiring to bring his eyelids to a heavy close.

"Hey," he says to the blur that must be Natasha. It comes out parched and broken but at least it means she won't be coming up with more interesting ways to generate a response. Even though the opiates are shifting the pain to the back of his mind it's still there the stiffness, the bruising and the sensation of torn things sutured back together. He grimaces.

"Go back to sleep Clint," he thinks he hears her say quietly enough that Coulson can claim not to have heard the care in her voice. She's untangling the line and putting his hand back by his side with more care than he really feels he deserves. With her permission he lets the darkness take him.

X. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. x. X.


	3. Chapter 3

There are prongs in his nose blowing pure oxygen into his lungs every time he takes a breath. It's uncomfortable; it makes him want to blow his nose. Every time he wakes he takes them out. His shoulders ache as if he'd been at the buttes all day. It's stiffness but with the added feeling that something within him is trying to push the capsules apart and for a moment the pain of it out does the pain in his right side. Every time he drifts back to sleep the unseen SHEILD medical team conspire to put the damn prongs right back where they began.

Clint can't tell how long it's been since the bungled op. In and out of the blackness he gets brief glimpses of bags of intravenous fluids dripping steadily into the back of his hand and the faceless dark blue be-scrubbed staff beyond the glass partition. There is the incessant beeping of machines just low enough and not quite rhythmic enough to disappear into the wall of white noise. Sometimes he can tell there is someone in the room with him reading in the corner or writing notes, the note writing he assumes is Coulson the soft scratch of a fountain pen giving the senior agent away.

Eventually the periods of wakefulness grow longer. It seems quite abruptly that the nursing staff now have faces. Faces that are frustrated with him, pushing the prong back up his nose and telling him, "The Nasal cannula is required while you are on morphine Agent Barton stop removing it."

He feels exhausted and yet at the same time utterly bored. He hasn't seen Natasha since she flicked his ear and then told him to go back to sleep. The inability to move easily and the distracted ache of medicated pain give him far too much time to dwell on what it means. The only upside to her absence he can think of is the bags of fluid currently hanging from his bedside draining his bladder in the most humiliating way possible.

He falls asleep again only to be roused by the brunette nurse with the two earrings holes in her left ear wanting to take his blood pressure, his temperature and generally fuss around justifying why he is now awake. When she sticks the thermometer in his ear he catches the flicker of concern on her face as she quickly schools it into professional blankness. She notes the data on his chart before leaving the room almost imperceptibly faster than he knew she might have.

It must be night now there are less people round the desk that he can see the nurse reach over. She grabs a phone. Clint is starting to feel like he wants to throw up. It could be the morphine he supposes; it's not as if he has anything in his stomach to throw up.

"Agent Barton?" _Shit where the hell did he come from_? "Agent Barton?"

"Uhuh," he answers and if they'd just let him drink something it wouldn't sound like he'd been licking the length of the Atacama.

"Agent Barton," the man sighs as he says his name and Clint just wishes he'd get on with it. He knows his name, why the dude is waking him up is clearly not because he wants to check Clint can respond to his name. "Your temperature has spiked which indicates an infection we are going to be changing your antibiotics while we wait for the lab results."

"Whatever you say Doc," he manages to croak out. The doctor with the greying temples turns to talk to the tall black nurse next to him giving rapid instructions that sound like Clint should have an enigma machine to decode it all. Clint should probably know this guy's name. He's SHEILD and it's not like Clint's not been ordered into the medical bay enough times in the past eight years. It's just that Clint prefers to stay away from medical and do his own patch jobs where possible and leave contrary to medical advice where it isn't.

He shivers and he wants to ask them for another blanket but he's now not sure it's the medical jargon that he's not getting because he is pretty sure that male nurse just said "Purple Monkey Dishwasher," and that's not a code he's familiar with at all. Something's being added to his cannula and he shakes again feeling muscle clench in places where he'd rather let them stich back together. He closes his eyes to rest again, maybe the next time they wake him up with their nonsense he won't feel like absolute shit.

"You do know how get injured in the most melodramatic ways." She's somewhere at the foot of the bed and he's lost time again.

"Water?" he asks rather than rise to the bait.

"I can give you ice chips."

"Deal." She glides to his side and even though it looks like she is disgusted by the prospect of feeding him shards of frozen water she digs a spoon into a cup and places them onto his tongue. If his mouth wasn't something of a wasteland he'd have let her off the hook. Nat hates weakness, Nat hates lack of control and with the disgusting prongs shove back up his nose, the drip lines pumping him full of intravenous fluids and antibiotics and the Foley catheter that he just doesn't even want to think about he knows that right now he is all weakness and lack of control.

"Haven't seen you in a while," he says after the ice has melted. He tries to lick his bottom lip but mere saliva isn't going to fix that mess.

"Just because you haven't remained conscious enough to see me doesn't mean I haven't been around."

"How long?"

"Five days since your surgery," she tells him before feeding him some more ice. She's not in her uniform, just her favourite jeans and a t-shirt he thinks she may have stolen from him it's the logo of some band or cult movie that's been worn away to the point that you'd need forensics to work out what it was. "You panicked them with that infection business, kept throwing around words like sepsis." She angles her head at this indicating the medics flitting around behind the glass.

"You panic?" he asks trying to make it sound flippant rather than vulnerable. She raises an eyebrow at him.

"Oh yes Barton I'm well known for my panicking."

"It's your dirty knife that gave me the infection in the first place, least you could do is try Tash."

"My knives are pristine." She's right of course Nat does love to keep those things clean. He's watched her methodically sterilize each one before and after ops and God help him it's one of the most erotic things he's ever seen, it's not just bacteria that makes him sick. She lowers her voice slightly and leans in, "if someone hadn't rappelled through a glass window then my knife would not have been trying to remove a kidney."

"If someone hadn't turned off her comm…" he starts but gives up halfway. All accusations lead right back to his shitty attitude and Nat's not one to yield without winning. "So no sepsis then?" He still feels cold and clammy but the nausea and headache have subsided and no one's been talking in gibberish.

"Yet again the miracles of antibiotics and your immune system prevent me from having the peaceful life I crave."

"I'd give it three minutes before you returned to a life of crime out of sheer boredom," he answers tiredly. There's a quick flash of anger before her face goes cold. "Didn't mean it Nat."

"Fury won't put me back on the rotation till you answer some questions about broken windows, dead low level crime bosses and a lack of useful intelligence. So there will be no untraceable poison added to your IV tonight."

"Ah yeah I remember something about him not being happy with your report." She shrugs while he catches his breath this is more talking than he's done for days. "What happened? You're always so… precise."

"You should sleep Barton," she says instead of an answer, Black Widow level unreadable.

"I've been sleeping for days. I hate sleeping." She smiles at this, one of her closed lip smiles that means she's fighting it.

"You love sleeping. You'd marry sleeping and bare its young."

"Bare its young? Really Romanoff?"

"I am being precise." There is the white of her teeth against her lips with this smile. "Who knows what the offspring of a reduced state of consciousness and an intellectually impaired archer would be called."

"Lucas for a boy and ah…" he grins up at her before wrinkling his nose with disgust at the oxygen prongs.

"Go to sleep дурак" she says turning a little. He is hit with an overwhelming need to keep her here with him.

"Nat don't go." He remembers all the things he wanted to tell her when he was dying. He remembers how time was running out. He remembers that he must have said some of it when Coulson was around. She looks like if she wasn't the deadly assassin she is she'd have flinched at the nakedness of the request. When you aren't dying it's all terrifying again. "I, um, ice chips."

He can see a hint of relief in those green eyes of hers before she rolls them. "I'm not your nurse Hawkeye."

"But you'd look so good in one of those uniforms."

"Only strippers wear those uniforms Barton, they wear scrubs."

"I knew there was a reason I hadn't bothered to stay awake," he grumbles half-heartedly.


	4. Chapter 4

The next few days were the same muddled mass of boredom and pain. He'd often wake to find Natasha curled up in the corner chair reading dog eared novels far too thick for him to ask her to summarize. They'd bicker or sit in comfortable silence until he felt too tired to continue and he'd close his eyes to rest them just for a moment and when he'd open them again the lighting would be different, the medics would have changed shifts and Natasha would be gone. She did not once ask him about the garbled request for them to dance.

On the third day they insist that he is well enough to sit up and Byron, the black nurse who now had a name, man handles him into position. Clint's blood pressure drops and he wants to be sick. "Byron, Man, I'm gonna chuck."

"Nope, it's a no vomit day Barton," Byron insists in his 'no shit from you' voice and in his dizzy state Clint falls back on his training and takes it as an order. There is no vomiting.

They take away his drugs. They replace them with drugs that are all together less fun.

The Foley Catheter comes out too. The less said about that the better. But as Byron says, ain't nothing he hasn't seen before and it means his kidneys and shit are working just fine now, no blood, no fuss. He could start moving around a bit.

He wakes to find Nat in his room again her long red hair braided down to her back and her legs curled under her on the chair. "Hey Nat," he says trying to sound as if waking to her presence wasn't just about the best thing in the world.

"Mmm hmm," she answers him without looking up from her book. In her cruel and torturous fashion she reads to then end of her page before replacing her book mark and giving him the eye contact he so desperately desires. "Hawkeye. I hear you get to sit up now."

"You hear everything. Little spider in her web pulling secrets from every thread."

She makes a face, "It's hardly classified information." She pulls her feet out from under her leaning forward on to her knees and looking uncomfortable for a moment, at least as uncomfortable as Nat ever gets.

No one else gets to see her like this. He's never seen her eyes do the same things they do when it's just them. There are smiles that never quite reach her eyes and fear that is perfectly replicated, she can lick her lips and flick a curl away in a way that looks utterly unconscious and can fool any man into believing she is in love with them but when it's them and only them there are smiles that start at her green eyes and bottom lips bitten in real concern. He wants to believe that it means as much to her as it does to him.

"Coulson's coming down later to start your debrief. He's been putting Fury and Hill off for a few days. He's been telling them you're too sick to have got anything but nonsense till now."

"And Fury said they get nothing helpful from me even when I'm 100%," he says pulling himself up on the bed and sinking into the pillows behind him.

"He put it a little more… ah succinctly… but yes." They both know it's not true. His reports while lacking her cool precision are always accurate and often better at providing a clear big picture analysis.

"What didn't you tell them Tash? Why are you here instead of, gee I dunno, Istanbul?" She watches him for longer than is comfortable and he thinks she is calculating just how much to tell even him.

"I told them everything. I just didn't provide the superfluous details."

"Details like… Sting's Russians sung badly into your earpiece for a good half hour?"

"I'm not sure that noise could be classed as only 'badly'."

"It's a talent, what can I say." She ignores him.

"They know I turned off the earpiece. They know the Algerian свинья showed up early and that he knew that I was not Emilija the 'aspiring dancer'." He likes the way he can hear the inverted commas in her voice. "They know you repelled in through the window instead of maintaining your position. They know our source of information is dead and you are persistently almost dying." She sounds as if she is sick to death of it and there is nothing more they could possibly need to know.

"Tash, you could have hung me out to dry. It was my crappy attitude that got us into that mess in the first place"

"I'm a professional Agent Barton, "she snaps tiredly. "Your noise down my comm isn't going to compromise me." Her eyes narrow, challenging him to argue she is anything less than perfect. "I don't know why you chose to launch yourself through a sheet of glass instead of holding your position and allowing me to handle it." _She's still pissed about that then._ "But you are my partner and I choose to believe that you had reasons and knowledge I did not." She goes silent staring him down.

"Tasha," he says softly.

"No. We were fucked by bad intel and someone with knowledge about our movements." Her trigger finger flexes when she mentions this shadowy someone. As if catching herself she folds her arms across her chest and mutters something incomprehensible in Russian. Clint almost laughs at how much she looks like a defiant teenager.

"Wouldn't you rather be in Istanbul or Helsinki than sitting here waiting on me to…"

She looks up at him again and for a second he lets himself believe she looks hurt.

"This is what we do. Partners. That means I stay. You get better and I stay."

"I'm telling Coulson everything."

"Fine."

"Nat I'm…" Oh but that look says an apology will earn him another go round with catheterization and he shuts his mouth. She looks at him waiting for him to formulate a response that won't get him into trouble. "Aw hell Nat." he says instead scratching at the growth on his chin.

"You look like shit," she says in response.

"Nice," he says.

"I can bring you down a razor before Coulson gets here."

"I am not letting your deadly hands anywhere near my throat with a razor."

"I wasn't offering to shave you egomaniac."

"Oh. Yeah right 'course," he snickers embarrassed by the assumption, "Hey Nat where's my bow?"

"Barton you aren't even allowed out of bed."

"Yeah, yeah, but she's my bow. Tell me she's safe."

"Hmmm? Well I was all for leaving the damn thing behind but the extraction team said that it could be used as evidence."

"We do not joke about the bow Agent Romanoff," he says stony faced.

"And they say I have no sense of humor."

"They'd be right. You hardly ever laugh at my jokes."

"They're supposed to be funny?" she asks her face a mask of sweetness and innocence.

He can only laugh pulling on stitches as he does so. She does have a sense of humor. It's the kind of dry wit that makes him think of class and grace and people who drink white wine or men in tight pants and waist coats and he really shouldn't have let her make him watch that Austin crap.

What he doesn't say is that it only makes it all the more worthwhile when she does laugh at one of his jokes, knowing she rarely finds anything laugh out loud funny. He also does not say that her laugh is beautiful even that one time she laughed so hard that she snorted.

"I'll get you that razor," she says standing up and she's coming back and he still wants to pull himself off the bed and stop her.

Maybe he can't do this. Maybe it just isn't any good holding on to her as a partner and a best friend and not risking it on the hope of something more.

"Nat, Natasha?" he asks as she reaches the doorway. When he's not on the job he knows he only gets by on impulsivity.

"Still not going to shave you Barton."

"Ha. No. You think you and I could talk later?"

"It's a distinct possibility. I have to bring back the razor and you rarely shut up," she says turning through the door.

"Not what I meant Romanoff!" he calls after her. He thinks he can hear her rare laughter as she leaves the medical bay.


	5. Chapter 5

"So…" Coulson pauses, "You chose to leave cover and enter the building via grappling arrow rather than wait and determine what these men wanted and if Agent Romanoff required immediate assistance."

"I know what they wanted Coulson," he says darkly.

"Assuming you are right about that, Barton you are a sniper, the best we have. You don't believe you could have maintained your position and taken the shots if necessary?"

"Nat's… Agent Romanoff's comm was off I couldn't give her a heads up."

"Yes, and it was off because ah, "he flicked back in his meticulous notes, "'you had been singing off key for almost half an hour'?"

"Yeah, okay not my finest hour but it gets really dull up there in the snow."

"You find it 'dull' sitting in high places for long periods of time?" Coulson asks giving no indication that he knows everything Clint has just said is the most obvious kind of bullshit, he just smiles his pleasant public relations smile.

"Look, yeah she turned off her comm but it was an hour before they were supposed to show she would have turned it back on. That wasn't the reason things went to hell."

"Hmm." Coulson made more notes in his leather bound journal. Everything here was done on pads not paper but Coulson preferred to take notes and coalesce his thoughts with a pen in hand. "Your comm was switched on and you didn't notify SHEILD of the change in circumstances." Coulson said SHEILD but he really meant him. To Clint and Natasha there was an underlying feeling that SHEILD and Fury and Hill could wait. They were separate but Coulson, their handler, was one of them.

"There wasn't time," Clint says even though that's not the entire truth. I t takes an instant to inform Coulson but that instant becomes a very long time indeed when Coulson calls back that Clint should maintain his position. Coulson raises an eyebrow pointedly calling him out on his bullshit. "The math didn't work Coulson."

"The math Agent?"

"Yeah the math." He sighs, he's tired and aching and waiting for his next lot of pain relief. "I'm a sniper, sure the long distance vision helps, the strength in the right muscles, the patience but it's a whole lot of math Coulson you know that. Calculating all the variables and then the right angle, the math didn't work out there wasn't time."

"And this is what you want me to go back to the director and the council with… the math?"

"Well Sir," he says giving his best sucking up smile, "that would be entirely up to you. Your reports are always the most concise version of events. I wouldn't try to tell you how to do your job."

"Hmm I take it you would also prefer I did not tell you and Agent Romanoff how to do your jobs."

"I didn't say that Sir."

"No you didn't say it," Coulson says but Nat is right all Coulson's agreements come with addendums. "Barton, would the 'math' have worked if it had been any other agent in that room?"

"I don't know what you mean Sir," Clint answers blankly.

"Had it have not be been Agent Romanoff in that room would you have taken such measures to secure the agents safety?"

"Sir?"

"Barton, stop calling me Sir you only do that when you are trying to deflect."

"I know if I hadn't have been there Agent Romanoff may well have been killed or injured. I did what was necessary."

"Agent Romanoff was more important than the operation?"

"Coulson if you are going to argue that we are disposable I can take my bow and be done with this."

"As much as that threat would have more impact if you were able to make your way to the rest room on your own I was not arguing that Agents are disposable only that none of us are indispensable. We serve ideals and causes bigger than one individual."

"Yeah, yeah well no one's dead 'cept that Algerian trash and you know that this didn't happen because Natasha turned off her comm or because I left my position. It happened because they knew she wasn't Emilija. That's what SHEILD should be worried about." Clint liked Phil Coulson he had a calm and kind manner that belied the impeccable agent he was but Clint didn't like philosophies that claimed to serve the public with no care for the individual. It seemed to him it was a road to tyranny. You don't sell anyone down the river for the sake of some high ideal, you just don't. It was one of the reasons he'd hadn't loosed that arrow into Natalia Alianovna Romanova all those years ago.

Coulson closes his journal and returns the cap to his fountain pen. "You do not dictate what SHEILD worries about nor, for that matter, does Agent Romanoff. We will find out how Nezzar knew about the Black Widow; however there are still concerns about Strike Team Delta's operational capacity given your relationship with Agent Romanoff." If Clint was a lesser man he would have sputtered.

"Relationship? What? Nat and I are just partners."

"Barton, you are at very least close friends with Natasha. Very close friends." Clint feels a rush of relief on not being called out on his actual level of care for Tasha.

"We're a better team because of it," he says stubbornly.

"Until this mission I would have agreed."

"This shit storm does not change anything," Clint says angrily.

"Are you certain of that? The man we rescued from that hotel room floor seemed intent on changing something."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Yes I'm sure that's the case," says Coulson in a way that sounds like he means the exact opposite. "I'll do my best presenting the information you've provided to the director." Coulson stands, the debrief is over.

"What are they going to do?" Clint asks suddenly very wary of the control SHEILD has over his and Natasha's life. Coulson looks down at Clint the soft smile is gone now and he looks serious in a way that Clint finds he hates.

"I don't know. Possibly they will assign you to different teams or partners."

"That's not right Coulson. We work better together." He works hard to keep the sound of begging out of his voice.

"It's not my call."

"We work better together," he says again because it is the truest thing he knows.

"You've both had solo mission, missions with other teams."

"Yeah but…" he can feel himself sagging in the stinking bed he's been stuck in for days. He can't fight this. _It's not the same when you know she's coming back, it's not the same when it's forever. You can't do this not when there is so much unfinished here. _And at the same time he is desperately searching for the argument that will prove them wrong, he's not compromised, she's not compromised he knows that he loosed that grappling arrow because he couldn't take the chance Natasha would be hurt. And if it was any other agent he would have taken that chance. He would have tipped Coulson. He would have made a different call. That might all be true but… "We're better together," he says again before he realizes that the words have stopped being about their work. He sees Coulson actively choose to ignore the slip of the tongue.

A lifetime ago under big tops and riding in caravans wedged in between stage makeup and costumes he learned that fear was for things he couldn't control not the things he had the ability to change. Here and now with stitches holding him together and nothing holding him and Natasha together he knows he is desperate for the ability to change this.

There is something in the senior agent's demeanour that reminds Clint of the time he brought in a young and highly proficient assassin he'd been ordered to neutralize. Coulson walks tightropes and each step is a decision not to fall. Clint suspects that look is about the next step and if a decision to go to bat for the scruffy archer is a decision not to fall or a decision to find out if there is a net somewhere down below them.

"Coulson," he says before the dark suited man can leave. "It was me. My fault. Don't let them punish Romanoff for my mistakes." Coulson stops and looks at him for a moment clearly deciding whether or not to offer up his piece of information.

"She's tried to protect you too," he exhales softly; "Normally I'd say that made for a good partnership." There is the slightest of shrugs before he leaves.

_I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has read this story since I started. All the people following and making this a favourite, thank you so much. But above all thank you to those who have taken the time to review, even a single sentence is a joy and makes writing happiness in a bottle. Some of you may have worked out this story started with a song "Unfinished Business" by White Lies though I myself love the Mumford & Sons version, I do urge you to check it out if you can. Thank you again. _


	6. Chapter 6

He had to eat the Jell-O otherwise they weren't going to let him have real food, as real as medical bay food got. But he finds Jell-O disgusting especially the iridescent green Jell-O they'd put on the tray in front of him.

Green Jell-O and bedpans were fast moving up the list of why being stabbed sucked major ass. He moves the cup back and forth watching it wobble revoltingly and thinking about how Steve McQueen might handle the Jell-O problem. It was better than thinking about Natasha.

He'd been thinking a lot about Natasha. Why Natasha hadn't been back the night before, what Coulson had told her, what SHEILD would do with her, what SHEILD would do with him, what Natasha would do to him when she found out? Once when he'd just been given his pain meds he thought about running away back to the circus. He could be the Amazing Hawkeye again and Natasha could be his lovely assistant. Then he thought about what Natasha would do to him if he ever suggested anything close to her being his lovely assistant. That was enough to remind him that he was a full grown adult man and running away from a covert government organisation to join the circus was not a full grown adult man thing to do, especially when you couldn't even start the sentences that ended 'pretty sure I'm in love with you.'

And still the green Jell-O problem continued.

Just suck it up Hawkeye, he thinks to himself and then wonders which of the many things exactly he was telling himself to suck up. The least problematic goes first and he spoons the slightly rubbery confection into his mouth. He makes a face because making a face is the only way he can convey how much he hates SHEILD, Medics, being stabbed, green Jell-O and not knowing what to do about Natasha. He makes a face because he knows all of these things are about a lack of control and for a moment he can see where Natasha's repulsion for it comes from.

"Nice face Hawkeye," she says leaning on the door jamb. He's surprised by her sudden presence but not enough to let it show.

"You know you love it," he says swallowing the Jell-O like it is medicine.

"So food, this mean I'll be getting my partner back soon?" _She doesn't know. Fuck it all to hell she doesn't know_.

"I wouldn't call this food. I think it's a communist plot."

"A plot to achieve what exactly?"

"I'll have you know I am a high level target and this stuff is diminishing my will to live by the second." She giggles at this. She giggles and he lets himself feel as happy about it as he would on any other day.

"You survived shaving alone. Did the debrief go a little smoother because of your more professional appearance?" He uses the green Jell-O to buy some time. Natasha comes and sits on the edge of his bed while he pretends to chew even though the gelatine dissolves in his mouth.

"Mmm," he eventually says and makes the universal hand sign for it's a little iffy. "You never came back. I waited all night in the same place and you didn't show. That hurts a man Natasha."

"The same place? You mean the hospital bed you've been in since you decided to get stabbed?"

"Just because I can't leave doesn't make it any nicer to leave a guy hanging," he says not really sure where he is going with this but as long as it's away from the likelihood that he has just fucked up their partnership good and proper it's okay with him.

"No one ever said I was nice Barton." She lets her teeth show with the smile. "Thought I'd let you have some recovery time after Coulson had had his way with you."

"Good thought but Coulson's debriefs just haven't been the same since that bassoon chick in Oregon showed up on the scene," he jokes.

"Cellist."

"I stand corrected."

They sit in silence for a moment. Clint crushes the Jell-O cup and decides the best way to get rid of it is to down the rest in one big gulp from the cup. He tilts his head back tapping the bottom and letting it fall into his mouth with a repulsive plop. Natasha rolls her eyes.

"Nat, I do need to talk to you."

"Why?" she says softly and he is taken aback by how vulnerable it sounds.

"'cause I don't know how much more time I'm gonna get to say it," he forges ahead anyway.

"Why?!" she looks scared and angry like he's just told her he has a terminal illness.

"What? Aw hell no Nat not like that, I'm okay. At least I think I am. They haven't told me I'm not. Did they say something to you? They'd tell me first right?"

"Боже мой Barton focus. I have never seen someone vacillate between intense sniper and five year old child so easily." The scared look is gone now only leaving annoyance on her beautiful features. Even frustrated with him she is one of the most stunning women he has ever seen. In fact, he thinks, the frustration makes her more beautiful. She rarely lets this kind of emotion show with anyone else. He'd take a makeup free annoyed Natasha wearing yoga pants with a bleach stain on the cuff over any other woman any day of the week.

"Sorry," he says guiltily reaching out to pull on one of her red curls. They are loose but not as smooth as she keeps them on a job. "You were worried though." She swats his hand away and the curl rebounds.

"Not as worried as you were, 'they'd me tell first right?'" she puts a whine in her imitation that Clint knows wasn't there when he said it.

"Yeah, yeah that'd be that sense of humor you keep insisting you have would it?" And they've done it again the stupid lighthearted banter drawing him away from anything solid and real and likely to change anything.

"Just because I have a more refined…"

"Natasha," he says and he hears his voice drop all pretense of humor. He watches her look down and away quickly. Her hair falls in her face. "Jesus Tash don't do that I'll chicken out."

"Then chicken out. Don't do this. We don't need to talk about anything. Just leave things alone Barton. Things were good. You get that look on your face and things have to change."

"What look?" She contorts her face into a frozen intense look. He has to laugh. "That's just my resting face." She shakes her head but doesn't say anything else. "Ooookay…" he bites down on his lower lip. "Tash no matter what I say or don't say things are going to change."

"Things change we don't. We don't change and that is good. I'm good with that."

"I might have fucked that up," he admits.

"What did you do?" there is an accusation in her voice and if he was healthy enough he might just say nothing and find somewhere high to hide and collect his thoughts.

"I jumped off a building in through a window and got myself stabbed."

"This I already know."

"There are people who are of the opinion that my actions indicate… SHEILD thinks I'm thinking more about you than the mission Nat."

"Чушь "собачья we've always had each other's backs," she insists as she stares straight ahead.

"I know. I know," he says quietly. "They might be… it might… I… Nat?"

"I have to go." She finally looks at him but her face is blank.

"No you don't," he says letting his anger leak into the words.

"Yes I do."

"Nat don't do this. You're my best friend Natasha." He grabs at her wrist and she easily twists out of his grip bending his hand back painfully. What she is doing registers on her face for an instant and she lets go.

She stands up. "Agent Barton." She nods.

"Natasha don't you fucking do this. I deserve… you can't just walk out of here without letting me finish."

"I've heard all I need to hear."

"No you fucking haven't. I get to tell you my side of this dammit." He thumps the wheeled table making the tray bounce.

"Your side? Your side!" she says outrage suddenly breaking through her blank mask. "This is all your side. You did this, I did not do this. Everything changes now because of you. Ебанько малолетнее Вы…" and her Russian becomes too fast and too heavily accented for him to understand. She throws her hands up in the air while she rants he catches the Russian equivalent for son of a bitch and a few other choice curses.

He can't decide if making Natasha Romanoff this angry is the most dangerous thing he has ever done or the best because something inside him says people don't get this angry if they are happy to let you go.

" Мне все равно. Мне все равно," she finishes and he is not sure she is talking to him anymore. She turns on her heels and stalks out of his room.

"You do care, you can't escape it Natasha," he yells after her. He pushes the tray table away from himself with such force that it skids across the small room and hits the wall. "Byron man! Get in here. I've got to get out of this bed now," he roars.

.


	7. Chapter 7

"Barton, I don't care what reasons you think you got you are staying in that bed."

"You get that I'm a highly trained assassin right?"

"I think the real question is do you get that you've been nil by mouth up until today, recovering from major surgery, blood loss and infection and I'm not just some nurse. I am a SHEILD nurse. I will put you back in that bed if I have too." Clint sized Byron up even in the navy scrubs and soft flat shoes all medics seem to wear there is no hiding the man had had combat training.

"Put me in a wheel chair or something I don't care I need to get out of here."

"Clint I like you so I'm not going to inject you with tranquillizers but no means no buddy."

"Byron I got to go after her," he says with every ounce of frustration clear on his face.

"Romanoff? She'll be back. She's been here every day since you came in," Byron claims.

"She won't be back if I don't go after her now. Now Byron!" He's throwing the sheets off his legs and trying to untangle the remaining IV.

"No Barton." Byron walks back out of the room. Clint can see him behind the glass shaking his head.

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on," he yells to the back of Byron's head and then slams his elbow back into the wall. A brilliant move, he thinks to himself when nerve pain shoots up his arm and brings tears to his eyes. He throws his head back against the pillows.

He remembers what he was like before Natasha was made his problem. That's how SHEILD had put it. He'd brought her in as an asset against orders and then she was made his problem. Coulson had said after all the deprogramming had been done she still didn't trust any of the operatives and none of the operatives wanted to trust her. Fury had said "If she turns on a mission, either she kills you or you kill her. After you decide to pull a stunt like that against **my** orders I don't give a **damn** which it is. **Agent** Barton the Black Widow is your problem now."

He had been good at his job, hell he'd been excellent at his job, but he'd been angry and a little reckless. He'd gone through three handlers before Coulson had taken him on and given him enough trust and leeway that Clint had felt like he should prove the man right. Then the newly minted Natasha Romanoff was made his problem and somehow the responsibility had made him want to be the best version of himself so that maybe, just maybe, the girl could be the best version of herself. He was beginning to see there were lots of versions of Natasha Romanoff.

She had been a girl when he'd brought her in. Sure he wasn't that much older but he was old enough. When the other people had been taken out of her and the costumes removed he'd been a little shocked at how young she really was. Somehow a file shoved in front of you with blurry photographs and vague intelligence didn't convey that Natalia Alianovna Romanova was just nineteen and responsible for the deaths of so many in such a relatively short space of time.

_If he could be a better man then why couldn't this child assassin become a better woman, huh tell me that Fury?_

And now she had stormed out of his life in much the same way she had stormed in, outrage and fear leaking through her calm blank mask and Russian cursing coming at him thick and fast. She had started all wild red hair and effortlessly finding each of his weakest points and she had finished it indistinguishably. Nevertheless she had changed he had seen her change she had become a better woman. She had stopped being his problem a long time ago and she had started being his biggest advantage.

So now he gets to sit here his hair sticking up in all sorts of directions because he hasn't been able to shower and bed baths provided by SHEILD staff aren't like the movies, you know the ones he's talking about. Now he gets to sit here alone because it's been days and the only faces he sees are Nat's and Coulson's and Byron and the other medics. Now he gets to think about how much smaller his life is going to be without her in it.

He thinks he should have taken Byron up on the tranquillizers.

The worst bit he decides is that he didn't actually get to tell her any of it. Whatever came out of his mouth when he was bleeding out over her delicate hands wasn't good enough and starting with the damage he had already caused from a hospital bed she already blamed him for wasn't ever going to be a romantic declaration of his intentions.

It's all Nat's fault, stubborn cold hearted Natasha fault, if she'd just listen… No it's not Nat's fault she's not stubborn or cold hearted.

It's all SHEILD's fault, clinical heartless SHEILD, if they'd just butt the hell out… No it's not SHEILD's fault, not entirely and he guesses sometimes they've got to be heartless.

It's all Clint Barton's fault, reckless soft hearted Clint Barton, if he'd just push it down and forget about it. But he can't because… he just can't anymore.

It's all Byron's fault. He's sticking with that.

"Hey fuck you Byron," he yells again. Byron looks up from the desk overlooking Clint's glass encased room and gives him the sign for 'I can't hear you'. Clint, ever mature in defeat, gives him back the sign for 'stick it up your ass.'

_This is not how it ends dammit_. He does not lose her as a partner, as a best friend and as the woman who makes love ballads make sense all in one single afternoon. He uses the bed sheet to push down on the vein his IV is inserted into and yanks the damn thing out. He swings his legs off the bed and pulls himself up on the bedside table. He actually makes it to the door before he collapses.

"Barton you are a pain in my ass," Byron says glaring down at him, "You know I can make it look like you just happened to code all on your own." The big man pulls him from the ground arm wrapped under Clint's arms and drags him back towards the bed.

"Wouldn't have to do this if you'd let me go after her," Clint mutters.

"Yeah and what's that you're doing? You think falling on your ass in a hospital gown is achieving anything but making my shift stink like a day old bed pan. I don't need to see your hairy butt Barton and Romanoff sure as hell don't want to see it."

"Hey Man," he says as Byron shoves him back into the bed, "It's one thing to threaten to kill me, I get that daily but insulting the ass that's a low blow, a low blow Byron. I thought we were friends?"

"You're getting only green Jell-O from now on." Byron huffs before leaving to get the sterile equipment to put the IV line back in.

Clint feels exhausted but it doesn't stop him from kicking his heels against the bed like a child throwing a tantrum. When Byron returns he's sweaty and uncomfortable and not any closer to solving the Natasha problem. He just scowls as Byron pushes the needle into his other vein refusing to look away.

"Gotta say you don't pick the easy ones." Byron says when he's done pulling rubber gloves off his hands and tossing them into the yellow biohazard bin.

"What does that mean?" he says sourly.

"No one throws a fit like that unless they're fighting for a something important."

"Well yeah she is."

"I meant Romanoff. You throwing a fit? Had you pegged as the type from day one. The Russian melodrama before that though that was impressive. Still tranking you, I got five more hours on this shift. And you Barton, you've got trying that shit all over again written all over that smug face of yours." Byron shakes his head but he looks less angry than amused.

Clint doesn't see the drugs go into the drip but he sure as hell feels them. "Whatever, I have been taught to withstand torture," he slurs, "You don't think I can sneak out of here even with…"

"Forgot what you were going to say? Yeah I thought so."

"Byron?"

"Yeah Barton?"

"I gotta tell her."

"Mmm hmm," Byron just nods and pulls the blanket back up over him.

.


	8. Chapter 8

The tranquillizers wore off, Byron had finished his shift and Clint thought better of chasing down the reluctant Russian. For one Byron was right he was hardly in any condition to be going anywhere especially without pants. It's one thing to push through in the heat of battle with a body full of fight or flight but another entirely to do so with only Jell-O. For the other thing he was so fucking pissed at her, to just walk out like that based on the assumption that he would deliberately screw them over… well if she could Мне не важно he could do that too.

And that is what he told himself for the next four days. When the IV was removed, when he was given real food to eat not just the repulsive Jell-O, when they got him up doing laps of the hall ways, he especially told himself that when Natasha did not come back.

Byron plays cards with him. Clint cheats. Byron calls Clint on his cheating. Clint only shrugs; pointing to himself he merely says "Carnie."

Byron points to himself and says "Jell-O, Carnie." Clint stops cheating, at least as obviously as he has been. Without Natasha around it's kind of nice to have someone hold him to account for these things, he only ever does it because it's so easy anyway.

After Byron loses the 3rd hand of Gin Rummy he spits out a piece of information Clint has sensed he's been holding on to since he sat down with the pack of cards. "Your partner's been around."

"Who? Nat? Nah she hasn't."

"Yeah she has. She doesn't come in she just walks purposefully by the bay."

"Maybe she's got somewhere to be."

"Barton ain't no one got somewhere to be down that end of the ship that often." Byron is leaning forward on his knees. Clint can see the glint of dog tags inside the V-neck of his scrubs.

"You thinking of applying for field work nurse?"

"How do you know this isn't Agent?" Byron replies. Clint laughs and deals another hand. "So no more escape attempts then Col. Hogan?" Clint shakes his head and straightens the pile of cards. "I didn't give you that much diazepam."

"Eh," Clint shrugs again, "I did the math." He reorders his hand while he speaks.

"The math hey?" Byron says. His left eye twitches ever so slightly, it's a tell, Clint wonders if he should let him know about it when he gets discharged as a thank you gift. He's not going to tell him before, he still wants to win.

"Yeah the math Byron. God dammit why does everyone think I can't do math. Wind speed, trajectory, curvature of the earth it's all up here." He taps his head.

"Calm down no one's calling you dumb. I don't get how math is supposed to help you with your scary ass partner."

"Cost benefit analysis."

"The benefits out weighted the costs when you decided to collapse on my nice clean floor."

"Gin."

"Screw you Carnie. What changed?"

"Different variables change the equation," Clint says flatly handing the cards back to Byron to shuffle.

"Like?"

"I'm not all hopped up on Jell-O now."

"Barton!" Byron doesn't appear to be enjoying the attempt to get information out of Clint nearly as much as Clint is enjoying thwarting him. It's not the most creative use of his time but they won't let him out to loose arrows into bullseyes or climb up into high places so he'll take his entertainment where he can.

"What? You're not my psych Byron and if you were I'd be telling you even less."

"Fine. You come in here, you turn my med bay into Grey's Anatomy and then refuse me resolution, are you sure torturer isn't on your CV at all?"

"Classified," Clint grins.

Byron cracks his knuckles. "She's like clockwork you know?" he sounds like he is mulling something over but he's not fooling Clint. "I send you out at the right time you'd run right into her."

"You've said it now; you think Agent Natasha Romanoff isn't capable of knowing your plan and adjusting accordingly?"

"A spy thing huh?"

"Classified."

"I wouldn't necessarily take what Agent Barton tells you is classified as fact. He tells me the same thing often enough and I am his superior." Coulson is standing in the door way.

"Sir." Byron stands and leaves.

"Coulson long time no see. You've gone and scared off my only friend."

"I'm sure given enough time you would have managed it yourself."

"You're not here to exchange witty banter are you?" Clint says sceptically.

"As much as it is the light of my life, no. I came to let you know the Director and the Council's decision regarding Strike Team Delta."

"You here to call it Coulson?"

"Not entirely."

"What does that mean?" he says he thought that he'd resigned himself to the outcome now he's not so sure.

"Director Fury and the Council felt that the length of time Strike Team Delta had been a team had caused emotion to play too strong a role in its work. They believe that Delta should be disbanded. Agent Romanoff should be given solo mission. When you are recovered you are to be put back into the field as part of a larger team."

Coulson stands in the center of the room, he doesn't lean on anything, he doesn't sit, and he doesn't slouch. It is as if the neatness of his black suit keeps him perfectly upright. Agent Coulson is the same height as Clint, he knows this, but he can seem taller when he wants to. Like he does now standing over Clint's hospital bed tearing Natasha from his life. He can also seem shorter when he needs to. Clint's seen him do it through his scopes, sitting at café tables pretending the menu is just the right level of fascinating, in a suit waiting for a business meeting that isn't actually going to happen, Coulson can walk up to a guy who believes himself to be untouchable and be everything that is non-threatening including just a little shorter.

"A larger team! Who with? I won't work with Monterey again. The guys got no flexibility. And they're sending Nat out with no back up? What do they want to kill her?! Coulson this is fucked," he yells focusing on a patch of hospital green wall to the left of Coulson's head. No matter how angry he is he reminds himself that it isn't actually Phil Coulson's fault.

"That is what they thought was best. I argued that this mission should not be viewed in isolation, that Delta had outperformed most of the field teams we have on a regular basis."

"Thanks," he says softly making eye contact with Coulson when he does. He means it; it's always a surprise when someone fights for him, even now.

"Agent Romanoff is to be assigned solo missions for the foreseeable future."

"What!? Coulson!"

"Barton," he pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, "You will be recovering and returning to operational capacity. You can't have thought SHEILD would bench one of its finest assets for the duration." And he is right of course but it still stinks. "You will be assigned something fitting when you are back to full strength. Provided the next few operations go as planned the Council and the Director are willing to take my recommendations regarding the reformation of Strike Team Delta."

"So…I get to keep my partner?"

"Yes Barton, you get to keep your partner," he sighs. For a second it sounds like Christmas in a catalogue photograph but then he remembers just how angry Natasha is with him.

"Oh. Okay then."

"I didn't need to keep you together that badly," says Coulson.

"No, no sorry. You spoken to Agent Romanoff yet?"

"Yes."

"How'd she take it?"

"Professionally," Coulson says and Clint knows it's a jab at his behaviour even if the senior agent's tone has not changed.

"She wasn't…. What did she say?"

"Agent Barton this is not the fifth grade and I am not your errand boy. Sort out your own problems with your partner and keep me out of it."

"Sir," it's not a question, an agreement or a disagreement.

"I'm serious Barton I do not want to know."

"Yes Sir."

"They are discharging you tomorrow. This time follow the surgeon's instructions. You are not Captain America."

"No Sir, I am the Amazing Hawkeye." He grins just to infuriate Coulson.

"Which is why the fitting assignments you will be assigned will involve me. Without the Black Widow around to keep you in check, Amazing, someone has to prevent you from making my recommendations look flawed."

"I'm not that bad Sir," he says a little stung.

"Prove it Agent Barton."


	9. Chapter 9

He is discharged and on the same day sent to a SHEILD base in California to regain some strength and mobility before reassignment. He says goodbye to Byron, telling him about the left eye twitch that might be useful in his next poker night. He also fills all the bed pans he can find with green Jell-O.

He tries not to be the intense unapproachable field agent in the canteen but he finds that general chit chat is a chore. There is no one here besides Coulson that he trusts with his sense of humor and even Coulson treats that with tolerance rather than joy. He misses Natasha and the way things were understood. He finds himself tired by the prospect of explaining, learning and building something like that with someone else.

He spars and works on his hand to hand because maybe next time he can manage not to get stabbed. The first chance he gets though he is down on the range with his collapsible bow and as many arrows as he can fire.

He knows there is someone approaching, they are soundless but he feels their presences as surely as he feels the bow in his hands. He nocks an arrow and turns on his feet instantly aiming for the throat. A soft white throat curtained by dark red curls as it so happens.

"This is familiar," she says. He almost lets himself remain with an arrow trained on her, almost but not quite. He drops the bow placing the arrow back in his quiver.

"Natasha."

"Barton."

"I heard you were on base."

"You didn't seek me out." She raises an eyebrow but her voice stays even.

"Not much point in chasing down someone who doesn't want to be found, not if you're not going to kill them anyway."

"Wouldn't be the first time you've done it."

"Perhaps I'm getting wise in my old age," he says and shrugs.

"I'm not sure I like this wise Clint Barton."

"Why are you here Natasha? You made it pretty clear you didn't want to discuss anything," he says his voice barely changing from monotone.

"Who says I'm here to discuss things," she says and it's clear she would like to keep things light and on her terms. Clint might normally let her but today it gets under his skin.

"Why are you here Natasha?"

"I wanted to… perhaps this is a bad idea?" She must have caught the way his eyes flash with the unspoken anger and frustration he still feels.

"Maybe but you won't know till you say it."

"I wanted to apologize. I was angry. I should not have left you."

"Right. Okay then," he says turning back to the range. He pulls his arrow again, nocks it, pulls back, takes a deep breath, arm straight, target aligned and releases. There is a satisfying thunk as the metal tip imbeds in the target.

"You're still upset with me. I've said I am sorry."

"Yep you did. But an apology for the wrong things just doesn't do it for me." Deep breath and he fires again.

"What would you have me apologize for?" He fires again right into the nest of black and purple fletchings. He rests his bow and turns back to her pulling the empty quiver from his back.

"Nothing Natasha, nothing at all. Apologies for things you don't think were wrong don't count either, they're just words. I don't fucking care that you were angry and I don't care that you didn't come back to see me. Okay fine I do care. But what I care about most of all is that you didn't let me explain you just shut down and decided you could do without me."

"That's not…"

"Oh it was Natasha it was, Мне не важно." He puts the quiver down on the partition, clenching his jaw.

"Мне все равно, not Мне не важно."

"Same difference," he says in disbelief that she would care more about his poor Russian than the fight.

"It is not the same… I meant… I was." It's not like Natasha to grope for words blindly. "I can't do without you," she says softly.

"What? What did you just say?"

"I can't do without you. Not forever. You're my level. I know I've found the real me when you are there. I don't want it to be this way but it is. It is weak, I know this. You wanted to change that. I don't understand why you want to change that. Why can't this one thing stay the same?" she sounds scared, he hasn't heard her sound scared, honestly scared not the manufactured copy, since he brought her in, since programming was stripped away from her. He looks back at her, trying to find some evidence that she doesn't feel this way, that he hasn't brought her back to this place.

"Nat that's not what I was… forget it. I wasn't changing anything. Coulson's got our back we'll be back together in no time. Nothing changes."

"It has changed hasn't it? Something's changed it's why you compromised us on the mission it's why you got stabbed. I need to know that I can still count on you." Her hands are still folded in front of her. He focuses on her hands rather than the question. The question leads down a path he doesn't want to make her travel.

"You can count on me Tasha. I'm good at my job no matter what Fury and the Council think."

"You were going to explain."

"Yeah and you walked out. C'est la vie," he gives her a small smile the first since she'd arrived.

"Hawkeye I won't walk out this time," she promises.

"Natasha you don't want to hear it."

"I'm asking," she says firmly and he can hear his own heart beat in his ears.

"You know you're my best friend right, don't really get on with the others here at base." He scratches at the back of his neck glancing up at her. "Aw hell Nat I was going to say this a hundred different ways and each one is better than this. I'm kinda in love with you."

"Love is for children," she says after a moment when her face has returned to the mask he knows all too well.

"Yeah you know that? Is that what you know?"

"Love is for children," she repeats.

"And who taught you that Natasha? Who fucking told you that? Anyone who stood by you, who looked after you, who made your life worth living, nah I think it was those bastards who messed you up good and proper. And here you stand holding on to a trite and useless piece of trash like that so that you don't have to deal with the fact that I love you."

"You can't love me, it's just… it's physical, it's infatuation… chemistry and proximity and…"

"Tasha," his voice is low and ragged.

"This compromises us. This can't happen." She is still, her face still mask like but there is panic in her eyes he can see it. It is the closest Natasha Romanoff comes to flinching.

"Tasha. I love you."

"I will sleep with you."

"What?" For a moment he can't even comprehend the words she has just said they make so little sense.

"We can sleep together and then you will see it is nothing just physical."

"What in the hell Natasha?" he barely controls his indignation.

"It's the simplest way."

There is a small part of him that hates her for this, a part that wants nothing more than to get as far away from her as possible.

He takes a step forward and another until he is close enough to grab hold of her. He reaches out with his left hand and cups her cheek pulling her forward into a brutal kiss. He puts everything he has into it running his tongue across her lips until they part for him and reminding her with every bit of him of a wall in Alexanderplatz. His other hand pulls her waist in towards him. She could easily pull away. Natasha Romanoff could without a shadow of a doubt have him on his back on the floor with a knee on his trachea in three moves but he still holds on to her tangling finger tips in her hair. She could easily pull away despite his strength but she does not. Even so there is no escaping the fact that she does not move her hands that she does not move into his embrace.

He lets her go as suddenly as he grabbed her. He takes two steps back. He makes certain his body language is as non-threatening as he can make it. She stands still, rooted to the spot but he can see her hands are trembling slightly and her face is flushed.

"That's what you think of me Natasha. You think I want to fuck someone who doesn't want me? You think I'd enjoy that? You really think I'd take you up on that offer? Goddammit I thought you knew me. All this time you thought I was what? A rapist in waiting? That I didn't give a fuck as long as I got a good time out of it."

He pushes himself back against the partition knowing his voice is threatening even if he doesn't want to be. He pushes himself back because he wants to shake her and make her see how much she is hurting him.

"That's not… "

"Sounded just like it to me. Just leave Natasha, you want to. It's not some physical thing I'm just going to get out of my system with one good fuck." Despite the anger and pain he hears himself chuckle.

"I don't want to leave," she says and it looks as if tears are welling up in her green eyes but he's seen her do this too often to believe it's based in real emotion.

"Why? Love is for children right what could possibly be keeping you here," he can hear his voice has the wry tone of gallows humor.

"I owe you a debt."

"You owe me nothing," he spits out as if her words left a bad taste in his mouth.

"I owe you everything."

"I don't want to be a debt to you Natasha can't you see that. I get that you see the world through a ledger book. I get it really I do. I've known you eight years but you and me… I thought we were more than just an account to be paid."

"We are. I can't ever repay this debt Clint. You gave me life."

"You gave yourself life. I was there you took it with both hands and fought for it."

"It is a debt."

"Natasha I love you. I've loved you for so long I couldn't tell you when it began. You are killing me here calling me a debt." He shakes his head. This can't possibly be what eight years of friendship and trust has been about. It just can't be.

"You are not the debt, нет, no. I never meant that you were the debt. Ястреб, I am tied to you бязанный. I cannot be untied. It's a risk I don't willingly take and yet… I owe you everything Clint Barton."

He stops and stares at her. Hair a little tangled from the kiss given to prove a point and lips a little bruised from the brutality of it, she is magnificent in her fragility and her strength and he doesn't know where to begin.

_Thank you once again to everyone who took the time to review this story. I'm glad the love hate relationship with Byron has been resolved ;) and for _anteffy1 _I hope this update came soon enough. Please continue to write and let me know what you think, even if you've never done so before, even if my use of commas inappropriately has been annoying you from the start, even if I need to arrange a translator, even if you are telling me my Russian is abominable and that a _Чучуня _should get me I still want to hear from you._


	10. Chapter 10

"Jesus Tasha," he breathes. He cards his hands through his hair before saying, "Yeah I'm just gonna take a seat right here on the floor." He slides down the range's partition then begins to remove his shooting glove. He knows she's still watching him so he takes his time. "You know, for someone who has the perfect skill set for saying exactly the right thing, you are fantastic at saying exactly the wrong thing to a former foster kid," he says bitterly.

"I have always made a conscious effort not to use those skills on you," she sounds angry, "would you prefer I did?"

"No!" He looks up at her from the floor matching her tone, "I would prefer you didn't think you were tied to me against your will but I guess that ship has already sailed."

"You don't listen. You hear things with your heart instead of your brain." If voices could stamp their feet Natasha's voice would have done just that.

"Sucks to be you then, tied to an idiot, against your will."

"Yes that's just what I was saying. You are an idiot. I am held hostage to an idiot child," she says sarcastically. She tilts her head to the side and purses her lips with recognisable frustration.

Clint can't help it, he begins to laugh. It's bordering on hysterical laughter by the time he sees what Natasha's expression is doing faced with his laughter and her blazing eyes send him further over the edge. His eyes stream, his side aches and he isn't sure why he suddenly finds it all so hilarious. It is only when she looks as if she is about to leave that he pulls himself together enough to gasp out "Tash. Tash. Don't go." He wipes away the stray tears and grins up at her. "Come down here and sit with me okay?"

"I don't see how this is funny."

"It's not Nat. It's not funny at all. It's just… ridiculous… ever get the feeling you're talking in circles?"

"No," she says bluntly. "I'm not sitting on the floor Barton it's dirty."

"Agent Romanoff I've seen you sit in worse conditions. I've seen you sleep in worse conditions. Just sit already." He taps the space next to him. She considers it. She does not break eye contact, she does not shift her feet that equally support her light frame, she does not uncross her arms… until she does in a graceful sequence of moves and she is beside him on the floor four inches from his right arm.

He lets his legs splay out on the floor in front of him and watches as she draws her knees up to her chest, the material of her cat suit bending and shifting like a second skin. They sit in comfortable silence for a moment and he doesn't try to think of what to say, how to explain or why she is still here. For a moment he lets himself be happy that he has her beside him.

"There are many phrases for "I don't care" in Russian," she says. "There are differences that don't exist in English like dark blue and light blue."

"We have those in English Tash you just said them."

"боже мой, I honestly don't know why I try. In Russian dark blue and light blue are as distinct as red and purple are in English."

"Right. So my Russian sucks too what else have you got?"

"Do you want me to leave so you can enjoy your self-pity alone?"

"No it's definitely more fun with you helping."

"I am not helping you feel bad. You are choosing to. This is my point."

"There's a point?"

"You remembered what I said before I left the Medical Bay incorrectly. You recalled it with…" She reaches across the space between them and puts her right hand slightly left of his sternum. She must feel the quick intake of breath but she does not mention it. "With your heart," she continues without taking back her hand, "if you remembered it with your head you would know I had said that the outcome was all equal to me not that the question did not matter. It's a slight difference I know but…" She looks sad as she takes her hand away. "I wanted to believe that I would deal with it regardless of the outcome."

"The heart pumps blood around the body Tasha," he chuckles a little but it comes out hoarse and tired.

"Then you listen with your amygdala. See it lacks poetry." There is almost a pout in her voice and he wants so very badly to pull her into him and kiss her forehead.

"Okay, okay I got my Russian translation all dark blue when you said light blue doesn't really change the fact that I'm in love with you and you wish you weren't 'bound'? to me." She nods once and he decides it is at the correct translation rather than the sentiment.

"I wish that being tied to you was not a risk… you hear I wish I was not tied to you. You hear I wish there was no Clint Barton in my life."

"You know that?"

"You know that I do."

"I heard the fuck me and get it out of your system thing pretty loud and clear though Nat." Out of the corner of his eye he can see her place two fingertips to her lips. She looks more lost than he ever would have believed Natasha Romanoff could look. He waits on her hoping she'll correct him; tell him she meant something not quite but completely different from his accusations. She says nothing for the longest time.

"I'm sorry," she says when he is sure the silence is going to make him crawl out of his skin.

"What for this time?"

"I was wrong to think all you wanted from me was sex." He gives a single nod in response; it's all she needs from him they've been partners too long for her to need more than a single quick 'understood'.

"All this time I thought she has to know how I feel about her. She's too smart and too damn sneaky not to know…" he drifts off not entirely certain of what he was saying only the sickly sense that if he stops talking she might be gone again. She touches her lips again. "I'm sorry about that. That was out of line."

"What was?" she asks distractedly.

"Kissing you like that. It wasn't right."

"We've kissed before."

"Yeah but that's ops and I have your permission."

"Like Alexanderplatz?" she asks and he does not blanch or blush because he is a trained soldier and elite marksman.

"Ah, I don't know what I said about that Tasha," he admits.

"Nothing coherent," she answers before her voice gets softer hinting at a past that stains her ledger, "dying men can only be counted on to tell you what you want to hear," she is louder again as she finishes, "I remember it too."

"The op?"

"The kiss. The kiss in Berlin."

"It was an op. Sometimes it's the best way to hide in plain sight. I know that. It's okay Tash. This," he gestures between them, "doesn't change that."

"Things are always less than clear with us."

"Mea Culpa Tasha," he says nudging her with his elbow.

"It isn't. It's not all your fault." He swears she is twisting on something inside herself. Her words are not as perfectly chosen, not as definitively spoken as usual. "I have to go," she snaps back from her winding thoughts.

"No you don't"

"I do. This time I do. They want me in LA in the morning. Natalie Rushman, Legal, Stark Industries." She puts her hand out as if offering him a handshake so he takes it, smiling, holding on for a fraction too long. He then stops dropping her hand abruptly.

"Stark? The guy with the armor?"

"The billionaire with the armor. The reckless billionaire with the armor."

"The man whore billionaire with the armor," he says sourly.

"Clint."

"Yeah, yeah I know," he says taking her tone to mean that he has no right to be jealous.

"I can't do this Clint."

"Do what Nat, do what?" There is the bitter taste of adrenalin in his mouth and the gallop of his heart rate and there is nothing with an eye socket for him to put an arrow through just the prospect of loss.

"I can't be… if it was going to be anyone, it would…be … but… compromised… it wouldn't be Anthony Stark that's for sure… I… love… I wouldn't… I couldn't."

"Oh thank fucking Christ."

"What?"

"I never thought I'd be happy to hear you trying to say you don't love me but I'll take it over losing you all together any day."

"You're happy with that?" she asks perplexed. Natasha perplexed is a wonderful sight. It rarely happens and he love the way her brow creases and one side of her mouth pulls up in a way that makes him want to kiss the corner of her mouth. It is not a helpful thought.

"No, Natasha I love you." He rubs his hands over his face and rests them in his hair for a moment. "But you don't get perfect in this world so…" He shrugs. "You're still my best friend and you're still my partner… if you promise to never offer me sex to get me over it again… I'll live." She examines his face until it begins to get uncomfortable so he gives her a quick smile.

"You better live. I've invested far too much time in keeping you alive," she finally says deadpan and she is once again the Natasha he knows all too well.

"You're the one with the ledger sweetheart," he grumbles.

"I do not answer to sweetheart."

He stands holding his hands out unnecessarily for her to pull herself up on. She raises an eyebrow and pops from the ground with no display of effort whatsoever.

"Stay out of trouble Barton. I want my partner back." She taps him once on the chest. He tries not to think of the warmth of her through his black shirt. "You screw up and they punish me with more narcissist babysitting."

"Yes Ma'am," he says taking another step back from her. She brushes past him as she walks out of the range. His fingers flex briefly before he puts a stop to the stray thought of grabbing her, pulling her closer and letting his lips trail down her neck. "Hey Nat?" he calls watching her spin back to him before she reaches the door.

"Yes Barton."

"You're gonna hack the servers and delete the security footage right?" he asks indicating the security camera in the corner of the range and the four hidden cameras he's tallied since he got here this afternoon.

"Of course," she says smiling.


	11. Chapter 11

The walk back to his quarters is kind of nice he hasn't shucked his wet weather coat even though he dropped the compound bow back to the armory. He's enjoying the dampness. It's been three weeks of dust and sun and the way it makes you feel like bleached bones after thirty minutes, the storm coming from out of nowhere was a relief. The blond offensive tackle who'd showed up in it to play wrestlemania with the agents on the ground had been a delightful bonus.

He didn't really think he was going to have to take the guy down even in the crow's nest. So now the guy is in Coulson's custody and he half expects that Coulson's offering him a job or tasering the poor dude. You can never rule out the taser. It's a good day when it rains in New Mexico and you don't have to fire an arrow into anyone.

His phone is ringing when he opens the light weight metal door. He pulls it from the desk and answers without bothering with caller ID. It is a SHEILD cell; you don't get wrong numbers on a SHEILD cell. "Barton."

"Is this line secure?"

"Romanoff? That you?" It's been months since he spoke to her. At first he felt like he was becoming a Dickensian recluse all hording his memories of her, replaying everything she had said in his mind and snapping at other agents, but he'd got his strength back, his mobility and brushed up on his hand to hand. Coulson sent him on a one on one, in and out op and then dragged his sorry ass to New Mexico. In the same time Natasha had worked her way up the corporate chutes and ladders of Stark Industries and had been there to watch Stark almost get whipped to pieces by electric whips. Just goes to show you make yourself a superhero and suddenly you get supervillians… with whips… seriously?

"Is it secure Barton?"

"Nat, you called me. On my SHEILD cell I might add. Aren't you supposed to be maintaining your own cover?"

"Didn't Coulson tell you anything?" she laughs softly and he throws himself down on the bunk.

"Nah but then I didn't ask, been under orders to stay out of trouble."

"Stark knows I'm SHEILD. Had to call Fury in when his birthday party went further downhill than the usual egotistical, far too much money for your own good nonsense. He's been instructed to keep silent on my role here but I don't think Mr Stark is that in control of his impulses." He can hear her roll her eyes.

"And you missed me," he adds rubbing the last of the rain from his short hair.

"And if Ms Potts hadn't have been in the room the other day I might have pulled out the Widow's kiss." He sucks in a breath noisily. That knock out gas is not to be trifled with Stark must be getting on her last nerve. He's almost jealous, he likes that he is often the most annoying person in her life.

"You aren't worried that Virginia Potts is keeping you under surveillance?"

"With what time? I suspect she's been running the company for years but now she has to do it while death wish Tony is trying to run it into the ground. No, Potts is only interested in me doing my job and Stark was only really interested in finding out if I had a boyfriend."

"I saw you in some of the Monaco footage, I'd be interested too."

"Intelligence indicated that it was a look most likely to be effective in getting me out of legal and shadowing the mark."

"Tash if intelligence told you to go in dressed like a large chicken would you?"

"Thankfully such an advisory has yet to be made Barton."

"Missed you too," he says because she isn't going to say it.

"Is it good to be back?"

"It's been fucking boring. Till tonight anyway. We are babysitting a…it looks like a prettied up hammer but it gives off radiation like a satellite and is sitting inside a giant crater. The biggest thing we'd done was commandeer all of this uptight astrophysicists work."

"Till tonight?"

"Yeah, big ass storm and this giant polar bear of a guy shows up tears through Coulson's agents and tries to pull the fancy pants hammer from the rock. He couldn't do it and so he just drops down in the mud and has himself a good ol' cry."

"Sounds like SHEILD material," she says and he laughs.

"Just what I was thinking. I was rooting for him by the end of it."

"Oh Ястреб , that big heart of yours, will you never stop bring home strays," she sighs at him but he can't stop smiling. It is wonderful to hear her voice again. It is wonderful to have this easy back and forth again. He'd almost managed to convince himself that it had never been that good. He hasn't stopped loving her. The faded ache of it still follows him around arriving two seconds after he does wherever he goes. But if she doesn't stop calling him Hawk and making him laugh he is pretty sure it is enough.

Clint was never taught that if he worked hard enough or was brave or good enough he'd get the girl. He was taught he was worth nothing; he was but an arrow and a target. Strange to think that years of a shitty childhood can throw in some good coping skills in among all the crappy ones.

"The folks I root for never let me down."

"Never?"

"Never." He can hear her throw shoes down on hard wood floors and the clip of heels is replaced with a soft shuffle. She opens a refrigerator. "You're not just getting home?"

"Mm Hmm. The PA to the CEO of a multibillion dollar company does not go home at five."

"Please tell me you aren't intending to cook?"

"Natalie Rushman is a good cook."

"Right but the second drawer down to Natasha Romanoff is just a place to keep the unconventional weaponry. Tell me you aren't starving because your cover can supposedly cook?"

"Cold Chinese takeout." She rattles through a drawer and he can hear her tap chopsticks together near the phone.

"Mothers milk to spies everywhere. I approve."

"I live for your approval," she replies dryly.

"I know it's a little pathetic really." She laughs at him, a low and honey marinated laugh that makes his toes curl. "Hang on, gonna pull off my boots. Just realised I've got mud on the sheets." She is quiet while he grunts and yanks the heavy boots from his feet and only speaks again when she hears them hit the metal floor.

"I should go," she says and he wishes he could stop her. "Stark expo stuff tomorrow."

"Sure."

"Clint?"

"Yeah?"

"I do miss you."

"Calm down Romanoff anyone would think you were in love with me," he jokes and instantly realizes he has got the tone and the timing all wrong. There is a long pause before she answers. He can actually feel himself freeze like a deer in headlights, like a henchmen in front of his bow, in the goofiest way possible, it's like he thinks if he doesn't move somewhere in Los Angeles she will forget he's on the other end of the phone saying the most appallingly inappropriate things.

"Anyone might," she says softly. His brow furrows and he blinks slowly confused by what she's just said.

"Tash?"

"Night Barton."

"Yeah 'night Nat."

He's always seen better from a distance. From on high, from far away, the patterns are not disrupted by the noise of intersections and anomalies. Pulling off his socks and dragging the oil skin coat from his back her comment clicks into place with other comments he's let slide not understanding them at the time, not having enough information to make the call. He tries to let this one slide too. He tries to let the analysis run in the background of his mind while he writes up his report.

"Dying men can only be counted on to tell you what you want to hear."


	12. Chapter 12

"Barton," he barks into the cell only half concerned that it's Coulson telling him he's been posted to New Mexico indefinitely.

"Romanoff," she barks back in echoing his tone.

"Nat?" He grins happy to hear her voice. "How much of that explosion of an expo in Flushing was you?"

"Much less than you would expect. How much of the destruction of Puente Antiguo was you?"

"None at all, mores the pity. Coulson almost got himself blown up but I wasn't invited."

"Did he at least promise to invite you to the next deity unveiling?" He can hear the smile in her voice, the way in which light must be dancing in her eyes with the same sense absurdity that he found in the news that the big guy he was going to put an arrow through is actually a god, or at least as close to a god as they are ever going to find. It's not something people like them usually truck in, when they're in a foxhole there's no prayers only swearing and a quick inventory of ammunition.

"Ah so you heard about the actual Norse God thing."

"Classified doesn't mean much when Agent Blackmore nearly gets killed by the God of Thunder."

"Blackmore has a big mouth and an even bigger opinion of himself. He didn't get anything'ed by the big guy it was that metal heat ray robot that melted the crap out of his SUV. I told you people I root for don't let me down."

"He sounds dangerous Barton," she warns.

"Yeah Nat," he says leaving off the 'what's your point?' in their usual shorthand.

"You aren't worried about that?"

"We're all dangerous Natasha. Your thighs, for one, should require a licence."

"And you're not worried about that?"

"Of course I'm worried. You scare the fuck out of me but you can't let fear run your life."

"You have no sense of self preservation," she says as if she is taking notes on him.

"Maybe," he shrugs hunching over his knees on the edge of his bunk. "Or maybe I've prepared for what I can prepare for and worrying about the rest of it doesn't make one ounce of difference to the outcome. So how you been?"

"Nice segue. Just finished up my report on Stark and Ironman for Fury."

"They're not the same person?" he asks confused.

"I'm not sure Tony Stark is a coherent personality to begin with. He may in fact be a loose collection of personality disorders."

"He really got under your skin huh?"

"I am a professional Agent Barton."

"Not asking if you did your job Agent Romanoff. I am asking my best friend if Tony Stark is annoying."

"Like a child with three espresso shots and a puppy,' she says dry and resigned

"Awesome!" he chuckles.

"Clint, they're sending me home after this," her voice has changed; it's softer and sounds as if she is admitting a terrible secret.

"Hellicarrier?"

"No home, Russia."

"You are not Russian anymore Nat."

"Semantics."

"A valid area of linguistic study," she's tense and asking for his help in the only way Natasha knows how and he is playing a fool because this is how he helps.

"I take it back. Clint Barton is like a child with three espresso shots and a puppy. Tony Stark is a meditation retreat by comparison."

"So I win?" he says giving her just one more poke. In truth he would like to win this one. Just knowing he is something to her, even if it is the most annoying, is solace.

"Ребенок."

"You okay with that?" he asks his voice dropping all pretence of their joking bravado.

"You being annoying? I've survived this long."

"Good to know. No Nat, I mean… You are a professional. You are amazing to watch. But are you okay with Russia."

"I've been back before," she says flatly, resolutely standing on the edge of her fears and refusing to acknowledge them.

"I don't think I get to come this time and so I'm asking if you're going to be okay." He needs her to tell him that she'll be okay. Natasha Romanoff can remove handcuffs and create weapons out of anything to hand. Natasha Romanoff can twist a man around himself till his spine snaps but Natasha Romanoff has a history she runs from and history she locks in rooms and bulkheads to keep herself from sinking and Russia is a place where that process gets a fraction harder. This time there won't be anyone who can see that and there won't be anyone who knows how to stand so she can lean into them marginally invisible to all but the one she leans on.

"It's a job."

"Yeah it's a job," he agrees but lets the question still hang in the air between them.

"I'll be fine Clint," she says softly but there is doggedness in her voice that he knows to trust.

"I'll be around when you get back," he tells her wishing he could offer her more than that and knowing she wouldn't take it if he did.

"Do you know where yet?"

"We've got clean up here and then who knows. Coulson'll let me know."

"I might be gone a while."

"And I won't hear from you."

"No."

"Yeah." In the silence they sit in he wonders where she is right now, he imagines her in a loose top and yoga pants, curled up on a couch, hair pulled back in a functional ponytail. She'll be in the process of shedding Natalie Rushman and her structured dresses, high heels and perfect memory for your coffee order. She'll remove polish from her toe nails and scrub her face clean of MAC lipstick and when it's all done she'll find a set of parallel bars and swing herself over and under them powder cling to her palms, her grip shifting and her feet pointing and flexing as she tumbles with practiced elegance. She will find her level. He now knows he is a part of that practice as much as is the gymnastics and the cleaning away of the evidence of her covers existence.

"It's the nature of the beast," he agrees tiredly, "watch your back Tasha."

"I will," she answers quickly and without much thought.

"I mean it you're a spy not a soldier. You can take care of yourself I know. I've never met anyone who can do the kind of damage you can but … I'm not going to be there and… just"

"I know Clint."

"Yeah, I know." And he does know but he still needs her to hear him ask her to look after herself as if putting her under onus to him will keep her safer.

"Potts resigned as CEO."

"I heard. Don't blame her."

"I think she did it for him."

"It isn't like you to gossip."

"It's intelligence gathering not gossip," she says smartly.

"Oh I see and what did you learn that might be useful to SHEILD?" he answers snarkily.

"I'm not certain it's of use to SHEILD but very intelligent people make very bad decisions in the name of love."

"Maybe they're not bad decisions if you get love as a result," and if a little hurt shows in his retort who could blame him.

"Clint," she sighs at him. Apparently Natasha could.

"You brought it up Tash," he says when she doesn't respond, stubbornly digging her heels in, he adds, "So Potts quit because she's in love?"

"Possibly but what I meant was that Stark let her because he's in love."

"The tin man has a heart?"

"Let me know when the wizard provides you with a brain."

"Miss you too." He laughs, it's a loud laugh that reverberates around his metal quarters and creases his eyes and forehead.

"I should go."

"We keep having conversations that end this way. Next time I'm the one who has to go. Deal?"

"Next time. Next time we may be in the same room," she says almost wistfully.

"I won't get my hopes up," he grumbles every time she does this, her voice on the phone pulling away, he fears she won't call again.

"It will be just me then?" Her quietly honest voice pulls him up short.

"Tasha."

"Yes?"

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"The cryptic thing, you trying to tell me something?" He feels as if he has most of the pieces now but she isn't someone you can confront with allegations. Natasha Romanoff will slip easily and dramatically out of your grasp if you press too hard. His Natasha, the one he pulled from the wreckage of her old life, the one he's watched in awe as she's rebuilt herself into a fire fight and a symphony and still water in human skin, she will tell him what he needs to know in time. He just needs to wait. He didn't wait before. He felt the weight of unfinished business and the weight of time running out and he didn't wait.

"No," she takes a breath, "It's just… for people in the industry we're in… we never… we never live like it could be our last birthday, our last… anything."

"Crap is it your birthday?"

"No Clint."

"Oh thank fuck. Right. Nat we are not going to die we are just too damn good."

"You almost died Clint."

"Yeah almost and still not dead that's just how good I am."

"No you are lucky I was there."

"I am Nat. I am," he could joke here but instead he lets her hear how much he knows he owes her, with raw voice and strained words.

"Clint, haven't you ever wanted to do whatever you wanted to do, with whomever you wanted to do it with?"

"Nat?"

"Nevermind." Her voice says she knows she's said too much and it begs him not to chase down her meaning.

"Nat… I… yeah okay stay safe." She's begging him, in the quiet way of partners who know each other's cues and movements, so he does not ask her what she would do if it was their last day, their last conversation. He does not tell her what he wanted to tell her when he thought it was his last day, their last conversation. She knows and he suspects he knows what she isn't saying now.

"You too Barton."

"What could possibly happen to me in New Mexico?"

"I hear Aliens are a big thing down there."

"Ha! Don't you know it."

'


	13. Chapter 13

Beeeeep

Hey Nat. Just me. I know you won't have your phone but for when you get back, Fury has me on another babysitting job. After your debrief call or just come find me. Yeah, find me you're good at that.


	14. Chapter 14

The clusterfuck had started in the very early hours of the morning. Selvig and the scientists running back and forth like ants in the concrete bunker. He checks the computer files, the security data and climbs up into the scaffolding mezzanine overlooking the cube and the increasingly frantic movements of the physicists and engineers. From up here he has a sense of perspective. Selvig had muttered about the objects behavior as he stalked through the echoing chamber and as far as Clint could see that's just what the thing was doing but it was behavior controlled by something or someone other than SHIELD and its consultants.

Fury had been called in, Coulson taking charge of the preparations for the probable evacuation. There is nothing left to do but wait on a pattern to become clear or a change to illuminate. He hangs his legs off the ledge gripping the railing with his forearms. The call went out that emergency evacuation was confirmed and all the non-essential personal left the basement room with their work according to protocol. He scans the room methodically.

This place could go up like an incendiary with the amount of energy pulsing through that blue glowing cube. Even the smartest of their scientists and NASA consultants admitted they didn't understand it. It did not seem like the best decision to play around with the damn thing even before the sparking and turn itself back on started. Second guessing people is in Clint's nature, generally he finds that Fury is more than unusually clear sighted and correct but this blue cube and trying to harness energy with a gateway to outer space seemed to be asking for a kind of trouble Clint wants no part in.

Selvig is good at his job. There is no doubt about it. He has watched the man draw conclusions and make intellectual leaps with both logic and intuition and that is a kind of intelligence he has rarely seen in scientists. The man however has clearly had a negative experience with covert government operations even prior to the admittedly heavy handed removal of all of Dr Foster's work by Coulson's team in New Mexico. Despite agreeing to work on the Tesseract project he has kept the agents on site at a distance treating them with undisguised suspicion.

Clint knows he has a particular dislike of his role in the western sector. It's not the scientist's fault but it does grate. Clint is here to run checks on security and watch for breaches. It's not personal; it is only done for security and secrecy purposes. Selvig has a particular way of referring to him as 'The Hawk', a nickname Clint has heard more than once, but there is something in Selvig's tone that indicates 'Hawk' is synonymous with Stasi. Clint does not wish to tolerate the tarnishing of that particular nickname.

The black leather swish of Fury's coat through the doorway catches his gaze but there is no need to follow the eye patched man to the floor until he calls. Selvig and the other scientists can brief first. Selvig walks with the Director to the computer he's been using to monitor the radiation coming off the cube. The stress of the sudden change in circumstances pours off the older man making his conversation with the Director curter than is in his usual manner and his frustration at having to explain the science all the more obvious. The Director looks up to the yellow railings and the site banners to where Clint is sitting, Clint's earpiece crackles and he hears Fury "Agent Barton Report."

Swinging his legs back over the drop he wraps himself around the rope and slides down griping with his gloves. Fury looks displeased but Clint has yet to have seen the man look pleased. Fury directs them clearly to walk away from the scientists still plugging data into consoles in what Clint now thinks is a delusory hope that they will be able to shut the tesseract down.

"I gave you this detail so that you could keep a close eye on things," Fury says.

"Well I see better from a distance, Sir."

"You seen anything that might set this thing off?"

"No one's come and gone. Selvig's clean. No contacts, no IMs," he says listing the relevant checks he's made. "If there was any tampering, Sir, it wasn't at this end." He crosses his arms across his chest as he makes his final assessment of the situation. The portal is in front of them now and it is humming at a frequency that makes Clint's arm hairs stand on end beneath his SHIELD jacket. He watches the cubes surface flow like liquid crystals.

"At this end?"

"Yeah the cube is a doorway to the other end of space right?" he looks back at the Director suddenly aware that the thought has not occurred to Fury at all. "Doors open from both sides."

The cube gives off a concussive wave of energy shaking the ground. He swiftly moves the Director to the side and then back behind the cube where Selvig is still standing in front of his monitors. His eyes dart between the tesseract and the consoles. The scientist does not seem to believe the readings the monitors are giving him.

Two more blast of power and then the third twists outwards from the cube and stabilizes into a beam of blue energy hitting the reflectory point and terminating. The blast seems to expand and then dissipate and all that is left is a kneeling man.

Agents move forward to surround the invader, two a side, weapons raised. Steam rises from the man as he stands and the ceiling still crackles with the energy they had so hoped to harness. Clint stays close to the Director preferring to wait on a sign of danger.

"Sir. Please put down the spear." Fury calls out and the man, his face damp with sweat and his pale features framed by dark hair looks to his hand like he cannot remember what he is holding. Clint notes the man's posture shift as he takes in the spear. This man has no intention of putting down anything. Clint tenses, the man pulls back reminiscent of throwing a punch and Clint pushes the Director from his position throwing himself over him as the blast of cube blue energy hits the spot where they had been a mere fraction of a second before.

Shots are fired but despite the man's sick and disorientated appearance he is fast and the agents go down. Clint rolls himself back on to a kneeling position to take his shot. The shot is true but rebounds off inches from the man. He goes to take a second as the man throws another blast, he rolls as it hits but as the agents behind him are thrown down by the explosion he too is thrown hard against the concrete flooring smacking his head and shoulder awkwardly.

He tries to get back to a defensible position but he wasn't kidding when he said the guy was fast. He is behind him before he can stand. He goes to aim his gun but the man grips his arm twisting it painfully. Despite his slight frame the man is strong and a fraction of a twist more and he will tear through ligaments and break bone.

At least I told her, he thinks.

The man smiles and it is the most unhealthy smile Clint has ever seen. "You have heart," he says. And Clint does not think that this can be a good thing with the way this man says it. Behind him he sees Fury move. If Fury is alive there is still a chance.

Then the spear is pushed into his chest and a painful sensation of dry ice, freezing and cracking as it spreads from his heart through each artery and arteriole, each vein and venule. He cannot breath but he hears the last breath he took escape him like a sigh. The blue ice takes with it his fear, his wants, his needs and his love.

Clint Barton is now truly nothing but an arrow and a target. It is good and it is right.


	15. Chapter 15

He curls on his side in the darkened room. It's still daylight out but the AI that runs Stark's tower has dimmed the lighting for sleeping. It is with relief that he realizes that the AI has kept some pretence of light, he's not sure he could handle the black void right now. His knee throbs and he won't roll on to his back because of the many shallow cuts Natasha pulled glass splinters from. She muttered about his need to jump through windows but said nothing else letting the exhaustion and shawarma wash over them. He won't sleep. He can't feel the dread of it push back at his fatigue.

The door to this borrowed room slides open and he knows exactly who it is.

"Tasha?"

"Shhh. Sleep. I'll keep watch." He sits up again while she settles herself in the corner chair, a familiar action in a completely unfamiliar room.

"We're in Stark Tower I'm pretty sure he's got some kind of robot keeping watch." He stretches shifting himself back against the head board so he can rest the twisted knee.

"Yes and they did so well when alien invaders used it as a base of operations," she says watching his every move. He wonders where Stark found clothes for her. He wonders if Stark just happens to have whole wardrobes full of women's clothing for his one night stands.

"Okay point," he allows, "but we won so I'm okay with you not keeping watch."

"Clint, you look exhausted." So does she, beautiful but exhausted with a butterfly bandage holding the cut at her hairline together.

"I'm sure Loki didn't care if we had a psychotic break from sleep deprivation." She looks him straight in the eye as she answers.

"No." It's a cold and angry agreement.

"Tash it's okay you can go back to your room."

"I am staying here Barton and you are sleeping and I am keeping watch and we are not discussing this any further," she says leaning forward on the dark green colored armchair.

"Go back to your room Natasha," he says reaching for the glass of water on the bedside table.

"No."

"For fuck sake," he says his voice growing louder with each word, willing himself not to throw the glass across the room he growls "Get the fuck out of this room!"

"No."

"I won't sleep with you in here Natasha. It hasn't stopped not when I was watching for patterns in midtown, not even when I went through that window. I didn't know the plan I just knew my part in it. I know what he was going to have me do. What he was going to have me do to all of you." He puts the glass back down unable to watch its contents vibrate with his hand any longer. He can't look at her. "Nat, he took such pleasure in what he was going to have me do to you."

"Yes Loki, not you. Not you Clint. You…"

"No Natasha! He was going to…. With my hands… because he knew… he could see everything I felt for you." He hears her breath catch in her throat but he still can't look at her. "So yeah it wasn't me but it was my fault. I'm not fucking sleeping with you within ten feet of me. I just got control back and you think I'm going to let it go with you here, with those… images still in here with me. Leave. Now Natasha."

"I'm not leaving," she says and it's less determined and more vulnerable than he expects.

"Fine. Stay." He stands, automatically shifting his weight off his left knee. "I'm leaving. I will not sleep with you in here."

"I won't sleep without you," she says her hair falling in her face. "You're mine and he just took you. I'm keeping watch. I can do that. You're staying here."

"Natasha?" he says biting down on his anger. "What the hell did he do to you?"

"You're mine and he just took you."

"Oh," he says allowing himself to collapse back down on the bed. "Compromised."

He doesn't want to do this right now he wants to hide in the darkened room fight off the story Loki wove in his brain, remember how to be more than an arrow and a target. He won't sleep but he might rest. He will do neither with Natasha in the room. Natasha who he was meant to break in all the ways he knew best to break her. He rubs at his tired eyes. "I don't know what you know but it was me, I told him everything he needed to know. I didn't fight it, I couldn't fight it. I compromised you. I did that. You need to leave Nat," then his voice breaks over the words, "Please you need to get as far away from me as possible. You need…"

"Don't tell me what I need." She stands her arms folded across her chest, the same look in her eyes as when she'd told him they had to fight Loki. "I was compromised from the second he took you. They picked me up from _Salinski Plaza and handed me my cell and there was a message from you, you said… you said come find me. You were going to be there when I got back but you weren't. Instead I had photos of that damnable Teseract and orders to collect Dr Banner and the frightening thought that there was nothing, nothing I wouldn't have done to find you. _

_"Jesus," he whispers looking away horrified._

_"I'm not leaving."_

_"I'm too tired for the softly softly approach here Tash," he groans._

_"I am not a wilting flower."_

_"You think I don't know that? You, you are a fucking caged animal and I'm pretty damn sure that if I say the wrong thing here you'll run or maybe even kill me then run." He turns back to her as he speaks._

_"I would have killed you a long time ago if that were true circus boy." It seems to Clint that she is too tired to even roll her eyes. _

"Dying men can only be counted on to tell you what you want to hear, what did you mean Natasha? I need to know."

"I don't know."

"Tasha!"

"I, I don't know."

"Why were you compromised Natasha?"

"I told you." But she didn't, she really didn't tell him. She told him parts of it expecting him to make the kinds of intuitive leaps that she could make in an interrogation.

"Before this, before the world almost ended, before monsters and magic, I was thinking. I was thinking a lot. I think I told you how I felt but I didn't ask what you felt. I thought you'd tell me. I didn't really hear what you did tell me did I?"

"Clint?"

"You need me. You tried to tell me that you need me."

"Yes." He nods, a quick efficient nod.

"I needed you too. You and me, we work better together."

"Yes."

"Natasha," He shakes his head trying to convey how inadequate he feels his words are here. "You tried to tell me that what you felt for me wasn't simple, wasn't easy like love is supposed to be, that you and me we are more than that..." She looks away from him giving him nothing in response to confirm or deny his suppositions. "Jesus fucking… I need some help here Nat. I'm barely holding it together." He cradles his head in his hands fingertips grasping at his dirty blond hair. Quietly barely agitating the air around her she moves to sits next to him on the bed. She should not be able to glide like that he saw the thick blue and blackening bruise across her calf.

"Then sleep. Clint you need sleep," she says gently.

"No." He looks up at her grabbing her wrist in his hands. "Listen to me. No. You and me we work this out here and now, before anymore dying or crazed gods or terrorists or aliens." He drops her hands knowing that she only let him hold her because of the frantic look in his eyes. "I love you Natasha and it's not easy and it's not simple and it is not fucking pretty. It's debts and history and not being the person I was before you and it's rubbing against someone until you're smooth. And it's longing this stupid horrible longing to touch you whenever you're near me. So I'm asking you is that anything like what you feel for me?"

And if time seems to stand still it is only because his tired body has managed to find more adrenalin to pump into his blood stream sending his heart careening against his ribcage. She tilts her head only slightly and there is such sadness in her eyes that Clint is certain that he has read the situation dangerously wrong , that hope and childlike sentiment has taken away his distance and distorted the truth.

"Yes," she answers.

"Oh God," he says the weight of it almost suffocating him.

"No more gods Clint. No more gods," she says as if it's a broken plea.

"You were right. I should have… we can't, I can't… It compromises us."

"I know."

"I fucked this up."

"No."

"Nat this is…"

"No, this is… this isn't a choice and if you'd been taken without telling me what you did on the range … it wouldn't have made the slightest difference."

"I'm a danger to you."

"As I am to you."

"So that's it isn't it," he says and the words are large and final in the fashionably furnished, much too richly designed room. She is watching him; he can feel her dissect his words, his body language, and his pauses.

"You came through a window to save me didn't you?"

"Yeah," he admits, there is no more room for excuses or explanations.

"I can look after myself you know," she says and it's lacking in all the defensiveness he has come to expect from Natasha when faced with underestimation.

"I know," he says, the truth and without justification, she does not need it from him she knows he did what he did knowing just how capable she is.

"Would you have done the same for a different agent?"

"No, I would have told SHIELD. I would have waited on instructions," he says numbly.

"Would the agent have died?"

"I don't know Nat."

"ястреб would the agent have died?" she is an inch and a half away and she will not allow him to escape without answering.

"Yes."

"Would I have died?" He looks her in the eye again, her green eyes demanding nothing but the truth from him.

"It's possible. You are good Nat. You're the best but there was something. Something wasn't right."

"I have thought about this also."

"You have?" he asks honestly surprised that she has and that she would admit to such things.

"If we are compromised regardless it is good to know you have my back. Someone who did not… Someone who was not you would have waited; someone who was not you would not have seen something wasn't right. Your feelings saved my life I think."

"Is this another debt?"

"You may call it something else if you like," she allows and at another time, in another place he would have held on to it like a life raft.

"Right now I just want to call it fucking stupid."

"If you like." She shrugs.

"I still won't sleep with you in here."

"Clint you weren't going to sleep anyway."

"You know that do you?" He smiles tiredly, turning to look at her, her hair hanging in loose newly shortened waves. He wonders when she cut it.

"Yes. I have some knowledge about the aftermath," she says simply and he regrets the light jab at her knowing ways.

"Sorry Nat."

"Apologies for the wrong things don't count," she echoes.

"What can I apologize for?"

"I think that we are beyond apologies."

"Oh." That feels too final and it ratchets up the desperation twisting in his chest.

"Yes, you and me, no more apologies, we will just do better in the future."

"The future?"

"There is always a future Clint."

"But is there one with you and me still in it."

"Yes."

"Because you came and found me."

"Perhaps," she catches his eye smiling a little as she speaks, "Perhaps it is because Hawkeye, the greatest marksman in the world, chose to take me on in hand to hand rather than at a distance."

"Yeah, I guess he did." He doesn't know why he did that. He remembers the target and the desire to complete the mission. He remembers an absence of empathy, of care, of emotion. He remembers anaesthesia.

"You shot Fury in the shoulder. The day Clint Barton misses is the day he does not wish to take the shot."

"Nat, I don't know you can read that much into it." There is too much hope in her framing of the events, there is too much faith in him and he cannot bare it.

"You have another explanation?"

"I still almost brought down the helicarrier, agents died Nat, people died because I planned their deaths, because I took them down."

"There is red in your ledger."

"That's your way of dealing with things not mine."

"Once a long time ago you made a different call and I was allowed to settle debts. It is my way of dealing with the past, yes, but I understand. I understand, Clint."

She slips her hand into his, clenched and resting on his knee. It is not a familiar gesture from Natasha. She has taken his hand before tugging him towards their target, pulling him back from an edge when they needed to make their escape. She has pretended to be his girlfriend, his lover and made a show of touching him but this, this is a gesture entirely bound in care and affection and yet entirely of her own free will and Clint stumbles over his breath.

"Tasha?" he asks and he remembers that it is the first thing he asked when she brought him back.


	16. Chapter 16

"Just… no more questions Clint. For tonight, for today no more questions okay?" she murmurs wearily and then she rests her head on his shoulder her hair softly stroking at his anchor point. In response and because all he wants to do now is close his eyes, something he will not do with her here, he squeezes her hand. He is aware that he more or less expects her to take her hand back, to take her head from his shoulder and return to the green chair in the corner of the room, a corner much further away than the one in the hospital room so many months ago. She doesn't move. Her breath is smooth and even near his ear.

Through the haze of exhaustion the longing does not wane. Her head on his shoulder, her hand in his is not sufficient. He wants to hold her, he wants to stroke her cheek and he wants to press his lips against hers and hear her moan. The thoughts make him gasp, intermingled with the images of bare skin and salty lips unbidden comes Loki's images of blood and tears and moans made in agony rather than ecstasy.

He pulls his hand away and she must feel the tension rip through his muscles. She looks up. Her eyes are wide and questioning. He can only shake his head dragging himself back across the bed his heavy twisted leg hindering his actions. After a moment he sees her make to follow him across the large bed.

"No Tasha please stay there," he is taken aback at how like a moan his voice sounds. He puts his hand up. She stops, kneeling in front of him on the bed.

"Clint?"

"Jesus, I feel ill."

"Clint what is it? Are you sick?"

"For a given value of sick," the skin between her eyebrows crease, "I knew this wasn't a good idea. Every time I let my guard down those thoughts come back." He gags in remembrance of the last image that flitted through his head.

"But you were okay," he pulls a face to show her how very ridiculous the word okay seems in this context. She relents. "We were talking; things were calm… what changed?"

"Nat, you… I… you don't want to do this."

"I don't ask questions I don't want the answers to," she says stubbornly.

"You might want the answers but you won't always like them."

"I cannot help if you stop talking to me."

"Nat," he begs.

"Clint."

"I thought about kissing you. Okay. You were soft and warm and right there and I thought about kissing you."

"And that makes you sick?" she looks concerned for a moment and he can't tell if it is concern for him or concern that he might find her unattractive.

"Natasha I'm pretty sure that makes me human. Any man who doesn't think about kissing you is so far up the Kinsey scale that I think they have to add a new number," she raises her eyebrow indicating just how absurd she finds him.

"What happened Clint?"

"The thought it changed. It was… good and then it wasn't"

"It got violent?"

"It got twisted."

"You hurt me intimately and in all the ways you know I fear," she says coldly and he feels a shiver move across his skin. The way she says it sounds like an echo of a voice in his head he never quite heard and he wonders if he has said it out loud, if the words came out during their fight or after in that cell when he was still awash with the return of feeling and control and the need to rid himself of the parasite that was Loki's mind.

"How the fuck? Nat how do you know that?"

"Loki. I interrogated him. Fury sent me in. There's no point in lying to the God of lies so I used the truth. He threatened… He threatened me, he threatened you."

"I'm so sorry Natasha."

"No more apologies, no more apologies for things we don't control," she says despondently.

"Tasha it's bad enough that I have some Asgardian's torture porn stuck in my head but that you… he got to you too…you know about it… I can't protect you from it."

"I don't need protecting."

"You shouldn't have to deal with this." She crawls forward. "Nat what are you doing? Stay over the other side of the bed," he tries ordering.

"It's debts and history and not being the person you were before I met you," she continues to move closer and her voice sounds like she is making a report to Fury.

"Yeah?" he asks dry and tired.

"And it's longing," she says tilting her head as she speaks.

"Yeah."

"Love is for children Barton," she whispers but she sounds like she is no longer trying to convince him.

"You've said that before."

"I think about kissing you too." She doesn't stop moving forward inch my inch until she is far too close.

"Nat?" he asks his fingers clawing into the bed. He wants to kiss her. He wants to breathe her in and run his hands over every part of her. He knows he should run. He knows that he hurt her. He knows that he may well hurt her again. She thought about kissing him.

"You won't hurt me, do you believe me Clint?"

"I… I want to believe you."

"Then believe me."

She has crawled so far forward she has pushed him down onto his elbows and she is hovering over him. She looks down at him and he can see her eyes have gone dark. She leans down pressing her lips to his open mouth catching his bottom lip between hers. Her face tilted, her nose pressed against his and her tongue darting out of her mouth to touch his own. He lets her do this enjoying the taste of her, the heat of her. For a moment he only thinks how he can get more of her, more of this. He reaches upwards to cup her cheek dragging her closer to him as his weight shifts onto his remaining elbow. She moves with him but there is something in the touch of her soft cheek in his hand that makes him flinch.

"Natasha. No," he saying pulling back from her mouth, "Don't do this. Don't offer yourself up as a cure. You are more than that Nat, so much more than that."

"Hawkeye. I want to do this." Her breath is hot against his cheek and she smells vaguely of the antiseptic that they used on the cuts that covered them after the battle. Somewhere beneath it is a hint of vanilla and bergamot scents he has come to associate with her alone.

"Yeah well I don't. I want someone to want me, not want to fix me."

"I want you ястреб."

"Natasha," he warns. He straightens up so that she is almost in his lap, with cat like grace she settles on her haunches but does not move away from him.

"I want you. You asked me if it was longing and I said yes. It will never be simple or beautiful or easy. But I want you and you will not hurt me."

"You don't know that."

"I know you." She does know him. She knows him more than anyone has ever known him in his life. And more than this she knows who he became for her. She knows the best version of him the one he bargained with for her soul. She knows his mistakes, his flaws, his bad jokes. She knows him. In the darkness he can see the angles of her, her plum coloured lips and her high cheek bones and her dark red hair so much shorter than he remembers it. He reaches out again running a calloused fingertip across her lips.

"You know me," he says and in his voice it sounds like a prayer. She takes his hand and kisses it gently.

"I know you," she says in a sigh, she is tired her lids are heavy but she will not let him do this alone.

"What do you want from me?" he asks taking a piece of her red hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear.

"Just…" she bites her bottom lip briefly and then leans forward resting her forehead on his. "Kiss me Clint, kiss me and see that all the images he put in your head are only images."


	17. Chapter 17

With one last ragged breath he gives in. There is only the sense of giving in and then giving out and he feels swamped by it. Then he is curling two hands into her hair and bringing her mouth to his allowing control to slip through his fingers. Natasha moves with him, her mouth soft against his lips and her hands across his shoulders. When her fingers slide down his spine from the crown of his neck he hears a low groan leave him rumbling from his chest and into her open mouth. Without thought he is leaning her backwards onto the bed.

Arousal is fighting fatigue when he sinks his hand into the curve of her waist lifting the tank top inch by inch with the arch of his thumb and index finger. He scrapes his calloused hand over skin that has no right to be as smooth and as untarnished as hers is. His mouth leaves hers, kissing from her earlobe down her neck and into the depression bordered by her sternocleidomastoid and her sternum. Her chin lifts giving him greater access to her throat. A flash of her throat lain open by his grip on her hair and the strength of his bow arm pulling her head forcefully back forces the air from his lungs but he does not stop peppering her skin with frantic kisses. He cannot stop now.

He licks at the perspiration on the swell of her breasts above the seam of her top. She makes a small sound caught between a deep breath and a moan. Her skin is salty. Her pulse flutters beneath her skin of her throat held taught. Her hands are tangled in his hair as one of her legs curls around him. His hand reaches her ribcage and as he sucks on the skin at the cleft of her breast he grips her tightly. Natasha freezes. Natasha makes a single soft sound of pain. He pulls back pulling his hands and mouth from her like she is fire.

"Tasha!"

Her full lips are swollen but press together in discomfort, her hair splays out across the bed and the wine colored tank top is pulled up over her stomach and side. "It's okay just bruising," she says pushing herself up on her elbows. He can see the shadow of it across her lower ribs.

"I hurt you."

"I'm a little bruised," she says straightening up.

"I hurt you Tasha. This is a bad idea."

"Clint. I made one tiny sound because you pressed on a bruise and you dropped me like a flashbang." She reaches for him and he can't prevent the way he flinches from her.

"Because I hurt you," he says angrily.

"Listen to me Barton. Are you listening?" Natasha reaches out holding his face between her two hands refusing to allow him to turn away. "You thought you hurt me and you stopped. You stopped."

"I hurt you," he says because the horror of how much worse it could have been is still with him.

She grabs his arm twisting it in front of his face. "See that" she says and he can see the perfect crescent on her teeth marks in the low light. "I hurt you too… боже мой we have done far worse to each other sparring."

"Tash…"

"I'm tired Clint. I'm bruised all over and I'm tired. I think you should accept I am right without the argument," she sighs.

"You think that do you? I'm tired too Tash, I'm dead tired and if I didn't tear something in this knee it was only by sheer dumb luck. You still don't get to shut me down. I'm allowed to fucking worry about this." He stares her down seething with the kind of rage inspired only by control taken from him. She scans his face for a moment and licks her bottom lip.

"Yes I can see that," she pauses opening her hands laying them palm upwards in front of her, a gesture of submission, and a gesture that shows she is unarmed. "Poor choice of words. Can we postpone this until we are less tired and less like walking wounded?"

"It isn't going to be any less fucked up in the morning."

"Yes it is. Training for sleep deprivation and injuries does not trump actual sleep and no injuries." She shakes her head. "You don't sound like you. Prepare for what you can prepare for. Worrying about the rest of it doesn't make one ounce of difference to the outcome. You told me that Clint. We can rest, we can heal everything else…" she shrugs.

His own words thrown back at him sting and it's not as if she has thrown them particularly hard. He feels old. He feels used up. He feels like he might never be the Clint Barton that chose not to worry about the thing he couldn't prepare for again. Every fibre of his being is telling him to be vigilant, to be aware, to hold onto control. He presses his thumbs to the space between his eyebrows reminding himself to breath.

"You didn't hurt me. I jumped off an alien jet ski onto a roof. I almost got hulk smashed. Human bodies, they bruise."

"Hitching a ride with the skeletor army was impressive," he chuckles. She gives him a tight smile in return.

"Thanks for the assist."

"Always got your back," he says automatically.

"You do," she says taking his hand again. "I'm going to sleep. You can take first watch. You weren't going to sleep anyway."

"Tasha."

"In the morning. Everything can be decided in the morning," she answers curling on to her side. She does not let go of his hand. He stares at her, the curve that her body makes on the bed, the way her hand grips his and the flare of her hair away from her neck. He wants to leave and stay with such equality that he feels frozen by it. After a moment, in the darkness, eyes closed, she smiles and he finds himself lying beside her, curling himself around her, watching the entrance to the room over her sleeping frame.

It is so quiet in Stark's building nothing like the constant hum of the helicarrier engines or the street noise of his Bed Stuy place with the pipes that sounded haunted or even the constant patrols of SHIELD bases. It's creepy. Maybe someone like Tony Stark finds it comforting to be this disconnected from the world outside your door but it makes Clint feel like he is encased in iridescent green Jell-O. He finds himself placing his ear closer to Natasha concentrating on her soft, even breathing the only sound other than his own heartbeat he can identify in the insulated, sound proofed room.

"For what it's worth Nat… I love you," he says and maybe, just maybe, she squeezes his hand a little tighter.


	18. Chapter 18

Darkness with shapes that dance on the periphery of his vision, thoughts that are blunted with the numbness of ice and he dreads what is coming. He twists, he claws and finally breaking with everything he has ever been trained to do he screams it, "No!"

Natasha is waiting for him when his eyes snap open. She sits beside him on the unfamiliar bed with enough distance between them that she was never threatened by his maddened thrashing. She did not hold him down nor try to wake him. She is much too smart to have tried that. He has thrown himself upright and forward in the most clichéd of responses to a nightmare. But it wasn't a nightmare.

"Clint," she says softly telegraphing her every move in a way that smacks of effort for his benefit. He lets out a gasp that sounds too like a sob for his own comfort. His pulse races and adrenalin is narrowing his field of vision. He feels chilled and is aware that he sits in a pool of his own sweat. He whips his head back and forth taking in the room counting his escape routes and the possible weaponry he could make with the furnishings.

"Clint," she says again and he finds himself focusing in on her and she moves in front of him. "It's you. I'd know those eyes anywhere. You are still you."

"Eyes?" he asks as he flexes gripping the sheet beneath his hands. She settles herself at the foot of the bed her feet tucking behind her as she nods.

"Uhuh, Clint Barton's blue eyes. No cube," she explains softly.

"Dark blue or light blue?" he asks his chest still heaving. She smiles.

"Never that simple. Буря. Eyes like a storm." There is something in that. The way she admits to noticing him, not his abilities or the things that might make him a danger or an asset, something as true and unnecessary as the way his eyes are never just one color. He makes the eye contact he's been avoiding.

"I fell asleep?"

"You needed to." She raises her chin a little.

"I didn't need that." He gestures trying to encompass the panic and desperation that coursed through him before he woke.

"It will get easier each time." He finds that he trusts her. Natasha, as she has reminded him, knows what it is to be unmade.

"I didn't want to sleep with you here," he says but the fight has gone out of the words.

"If you did anything Barton I would have hit you again. I'll hit you as often as you need me to."

"I don't doubt it." He grins and watches her relax a little under his gaze; he supposes that his expression has been fixed and grim for some time now. "What time is it?" The room is lighter than it has been but there is no telling without opening the heavy drapes the true hour. Stark's building is climate controlled to the nth degree. Stark could make it as bright and crisp as an Alaskan summer night in this one room and you'd never know what the city of New York was doing just outside the window.

"JARVIS?"

"Agent Romanoff?" The disembodied Received Pronunciation makes him look up, instinctually trying to find its source.

"The time?" she asks raising a sardonic eyebrow at him.

"Six fifty two AM eastern standard time."

"That's just creepy," he says allowing a little of his distaste to show.

"That's JARVIS. More sensible than Stark, even if he built him."

"You finding the AI's company more enjoyable than humans I believe."

"Than some humans," she corrects.

"Tasha."

"You look like you could do with another ten hours," she tilts her head slightly ignoring him.

"I'm not ready to try that right now," he answers rubbing his face and hair with the flats of his hands.

"No. Food?"

"Tasha," he growls. He can't deal with the mother hen stuff right now.

"I don't know how to do this," she says abruptly, replaced in an instant by another Natasha one less sure and one less skilled.

"Do what?" he asks watching her closely.

"The intimacy where friendship ends and lust…" she sees his face and smoothly adjusts her words, "or more, begins. I can pretend," she offers, "but you don't want pretence."

"I don't want acting," he agrees.

"Then… I don't know how to do this."

"Did we just find your first learning curve?" he can't help the smirk that comes with that conclusion.

"Barton."

"I'm going to kiss you Natasha. If my eyes change colour or if I pull a knife hit me as hard as you can." Sometimes, he decides, acting on impulse is the only way to act.

"Clint."

"I'm going to kiss you. Nothing else has to change but that I am going to kiss you." For people like them constantly moving, consistently playing fast and loose with the truth, continuously without roots or anchors and ceaselessly depending only on themselves, change to the few things they know in their bones is not to be borne. She tried to tell him that once. He hadn't listened.

He leans forward. His injured knee bent up in front of him, his other foot hanging off the bed. There is no point to be made now. There is just Clint and Natasha and this man has been dreaming about kissing her, free and clear, for years. He hovers an inch from her, tasting her breath on the air between them and he'll be damned if her pupils don't dilate. It's not a trick of the light. It's not her dipping her chin and widening her eyes to make him believe she is attracted. Her lips are parted and she is still, watching him through thick lashes. He can feel himself smile.

Natasha gives a small sound of frustration and pushes herself forward. His eyes go wide with surprise before closing contentedly with the soft pressure of her lips. He threads his hands into the hair loose at the back of her neck. She tilts a little more, her closed lashes grazing his cheek as she catches his bottom lip between hers and sucks. There a tiny wet sounds and moans almost made and he isn't sure from which of them the sounds come.

He still aches. He is still stiff and bruised and cut. He runs a hand along her neck and down her back pressing firmly with strong fingers. He can tell each knot and bruise she has from the change in her breathing and the way she twists ever so slightly moving his hand to more comfortable places. He does not pull away now. There is a difference between the feelings of wanting her to the cold knowledge that she was a target.

She leans into him further and he lets her push him down onto the bed. Her hands splayed on either side of his head he inhales sharply as he hits the mattress.

"Nat, Nat, Nat," he says between kisses.

"Yes?" she says her eyes open again and questioning.

"Knee. Not a good position."

She has the good graces to shift out of his way as he shoves one of Tony Starks over stuffed pillows under it. He chuckles.

"What is so funny?" she asks brushing hair from her face and looking put out.

"Aw I dunno Nat. It's been a long road and… I'm not really in a position to rock your world right now."

"Rock my world?" she asks and then she smirks. She is laughing at him and he is resentfully aware that he is turned on by it.

"Yeah Romanoff. Rock your world." She makes a show of looking concerned.

"When do you think you'll be fit enough to, ah, rock my world Agent Barton? I feel I am missing out."

"You bet your ass you are," he says and she laughs. "Nat," he pauses stroking her cheek with his thumb, "it doesn't change. You and me."

"Is that a promise?" He knows how she views promises. The claims of men made in the heat of passion or the offers of people who want something. Promises are transitory and promises are pretty lies.

"No it's the truth. Everything we are, everything we were, it stays the same. Same debts and history and relying on each other, it doesn't get more complicated if I kiss you. I'm still me and you're still you."

"And when you aren't you I'll hit you really hard on the head," the bargain made in her low tones and made to sound beautiful.

"I'm counting on it."


	19. Chapter 19

He had put his arm around Natasha and she had lent into him before he felt her catch herself and she said she was going to shower. He couldn't blame her, though it wasn't a huge change from the way they had been before. Stitching each other's bare skin back together, sharing body heat in safe house beds and dragging each other from exploding buildings when necessary had become habit but now each touch was loaded with another meaning and he could see she was fighting the urge to slip into a character. The shower excuse left him alone in the room for the first time since she'd glided in the afternoon before.

Three minutes it took, all of three minutes, to make him want to write his name in arrow holes across the far wall of the borrowed room.

"Ah JARVIS?" he says feeling ridiculous talking to a machine he can't see.

"Agent Barton, how can I be of service?"

"You know me?" he asks furrowing his brow. That the AI knew Natasha doesn't surprise him not only was she Natalie Rushman for a fair bit of the last year but the woman knows her way around a computer system. He on the other hand was a last minute drop in. He's not supposed to be on the team, on any team.

"Mr Stark has given me access to all the information provided by SHIELD at the time of his recruitment into the Avengers Initiative and your disappearance."

"Oh. Right. What do you know?"

"Agent Clinton Francis Barton. Agent of SHIELD. Code name: Hawkeye. Date of birth: redacted. Current location: Stark Tower, New York City, New York. Last known Assignment Project Pegasus Western Sector. Speciality…"

"Yeah okay. Stop. Please." The probability of his full service record being read out in a calm English accented voice fills him with more dread than the fact that Tony Stark and HAL 9000 have access to it. Though strangely enough not his date of birth, he wonders what else has been redacted and what else has been redacted that Tony Stark felt happy to leave redacted.

"Certainly Sir."

"Is there any food?"

"There is a kitchen located on this floor, however the nearest stocked kitchen is located two floors up in Mr Stark's personal suites. He has granted each of his team mates unrestricted access to these areas."

"Right." Stark is oddly generous, perhaps even manically so. He's been around rich men before, he's watched geniuses work before but he hasn't seen someone quite like Stark. Nat's right the guy is clearly a narcissist but there's something else underpinning it all that he hasn't seen in the arrogance and paranoia of the wealthy men SHIELD usually deals with.

"There is an elevator at the end of the hall to your right that will take you to the suites. Mr Stark is currently awake but in his workshop." He feels his trapezius tighten every time the AI speaks. He's not wrong, right? It's creepy to have a disembodied butler at your beck and call and watching your every move.

"Thanks."

"SHIELD has arranged for clothing and equipment for yourself and Agent Romanoff to be transported to the tower. The luggage is currently in the lounge room of this floor." Good ol' SHIELD putting the logistics into Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

He slides himself off the bed testing the weight on his left knee as he grips the nearest post. It occurs to him now with some sleep under his belt that he has spent the whole night in a damn princess bed. A four-poster bed, okay it's a little more modern with no flowery canopy, but it's still a princess bed to him. He pushes his weight through the knee.

"Great," he hisses in reply to the informative JARVIS. Suck it up princess, it's a little stiff but it's doable.

"I am able to call in a physician for your injuries Agent Barton."

"Um no I'm good." So now he has to avoid SHIELD Medical, Coulson, Natasha and Stark's mandroid trying to make him take medical advice.

"Dr Banner is in rooms on a lower floor if you prefer."

"Dr Banner?"

"Dr Banner has been working in health abroad and is quite adept in the fields of chemistry and biology as well as his primary focus of nuclear physics." He really hasn't met the guy. He was, until yesterday afternoon, File 071. He was, until Natasha thumped him, a strategy and another way to undermine the threats to Loki's rule. There is a small shiver of revulsion when he thinks of that name.

"Yeah. I'm not getting the nuclear physicist to strap my knee."

He liked what he saw of Banner. He's quite and controlled in a way you don't expect from a man that gets a shot of adrenalin and breaks whole towns. He kind of likes the Hulk too. Angry is something he understands and as long as he doesn't have to be close to it, it's a little fun watching those alien freaks get smooshed into the side of a wall.

What Banner thinks of him he can only speculate. In normal circumstances he wouldn't give two shits what any of them thought of him but these are not normal circumstances and he was compromised, compromised to end all compromised, when all of these guys were brought in. He knows the look Rogers shot Tash before he agreed to let Clint fly the quinjet. He'd rather not speculate and for now he'd rather not have any of his fears confirmed by actually running into them.

He limps his way to the doorway scratching at the now itchy abrasions that skirt the outline of his absent TAC vest. The AI follows.

"As you wish Sir."

"You programed to sound that disapproving?" He may just be anthropomorphising but the AI sounds a lot like Coulson when he doesn't like what you're doing.

"Sir?"

"Huh… you do the sir thing too," he mutters.

"Sir?"

"Don't worry about it JARVIS." He might actually start rooting for the AI. It might be all subroutines and circuit boards but it's sassy subroutines.

"Sir."

Clint chuckles. Maybe Natasha likes the AI's company for another reason all together.

When he gets to the living room he finds the duffle bags with clothing and weaponry as well as two SHIELD cells. Underneath his jeans is a Medical kit with everything he'll need to strap his knee and some heparinoid cream he can force on Natasha. The SHIELD cells means that Fury will expect contact and soon.

He throws Natasha's bag over his shoulder and stiffly makes his way back to the room Stark provided for the assassin. The shower is on so he dumps the duffle on the still made bed and calls to her.

"Just me Nat. Your kit is on the bed." She doesn't reply but he hears the sound of a knife quietly returning to a soap dish and a shower door sliding shut. He leaves as quickly as he can. She likes her space and there is no reason to stick around looking like some clingy, possessive… the thought cuts off because he does not know what word could possibly finish that sentence and trying to finish it will only make him the end of that sentence.

Food and hopefully not Middle Eastern street food is the immediate target. The elevator isn't that far away and he is pretty sure he can make it to the food and back without his knee giving out. He will not be as stealthy as he would like however.

The elevator is covered a rich brown leather and Iron Man gold and he is grateful that he doesn't have to spend the short ride up staring at his own reflection. The kind of mess that stared back at him over the sink in the SHIELD holding cell was enough. He looks down at the grey track pants and new t-shirt he slept in and shrugs.

The doors open into another Stark furnished floor. It's rather like the penthouse floor that they corralled Loki in. That floor is further up, he estimates, and probably a no go area with the Loki shaped hole in the floor. This floor does indeed have a kitchen, a large open plan kitchen that spreads into a living space. There is an expanse of glass looking out over the city. The buildings, he can see, have divots and chunks broken and crumbled out of them looking like a half-eaten gingerbread Manhattan.

He hears the elevator doors shut smoothly behind him as he stares out resting his weight on his right leg. He can't hold back the knowledge that some of this is his fault. He huffs out the 'huh' that is the only sound that seems adequate for the weight of it. Nat might think he talks too much but for the things that matter he has always preferred less words and more action.

"Robin Hood." He locates the voice it's coming from the stairs to the left. A second more and Tony Stark appears, clearly tired, sweaty and a little bruised but mostly he looks like he is buzzing with some kind of manic energy.

"Stark."

"It looks bad after the fighting's done doesn't it? I always try to leave after the fight and throw money at it till it goes away. Doesn't look like I'll get to do that this time. Though Wren, Christopher Wren, great architect, too many domes for me, got to redesign the whole of London after the Great Fire so maybe I'll get to remake New York City in my image." He gestures expansively to the view with the arm that isn't holding a mug. Clint wonders if Stark is talking to him or if he just prefers to have an audience. Stark turns back to him narrowing his eyes as he continues, "You're not much of a talker are you?"

"I didn't think you needed a response. Sounded like you were doing pretty well monologing on your own," he shrugs.

"It's a spy thing isn't it? Haven't got too much of read off of you. A lot like your assassin buddy Romanoff."

"Nat's the spy Stark. I'm just a soldier."

"Calling bullshit on that one. The bow and arrow thing I find interesting. Love to get my hands on the tech in that arrow thingy."

"Quiver."

"Yeah I know. Genius," he points to himself as he speaks.

"You'd need to talk to SHIELD about that. I came up to grab some food your AI said it would be fine."

"Food?" Stark seems surprised that he owns food. "Oh yeah right. Help yourself. There must be food around here somewhere. JARVIS? There's food here right?"

"Yes Sir. Ms Potts made sure the kitchen was well stocked with provisions other than champagne and coffee."

"There are places that deliver you know," Stark says testily, so it isn't just Clint who reads a rebuke in the AI's tone. Clint makes his way to the refrigerator wishing he'd strapped his knee before he came up on the elevator. The limp is noticeable and makes him a target even if in this instance the target is only of Tony Stark's chatter.

"And that's why I don't fight without armor. Very macho the whole no sleeves thing. Points to you. You got everything you need? I can get in a doctor or something. JARVIS we can get a doctor in, there's no reason that would be a problem right?" He's pouring himself another cup of coffee as he speaks and Clint is beginning to think that Tony Stark really doesn't need another dose of caffeine.

"No it's…" he begins but he drops it as the AI answers for him.

"Agent Barton has refused medical assistance Sir."

"You programed him to sound like that?" Clint can't stop himself from asking a small smirk forming on his lips. Stark paces along the wall of glass.

"JARVIS? Yeah, long story. Or short one. Turns out I like having people around that will fight with me." Not fight with him, Clint thinks, Tony Stark doesn't want people to fight with him he wants people that will fight for him even if who they are fighting happens to be Tony Stark. It does make him like the supercilious JARVIS a little more.

In the fridge there are indeed provisions. There are strange meats and cheeses that Clint couldn't hope to name but also lettuce and tomatoes and mustard. He tracks down solid orange American cheese, the kind Nat hates, and something that might be roast beef. He pulls them out, putting them on the bench and begins looking for bread.

Stark has stopped pacing and is sitting himself in front of the long kitchen bench on a stool. "Sandwiches?" he asks, "not very breakfasty. Waffles," he adds as if by saying the name they will appear before him. "Now they are both a desert and a breakfast. Also pancakes. We should get both."

"I'm just grabbing food to take down to Agent Romanoff," he argues against the waffle idea.

"Nat."

"What?"

"You called Agent Romanoff Nat before, I took note. I do that. I thought it was interesting. She won't let me call her Nat."

"No she won't," he agrees easily, slicing through the block of cheese with a knife he is almost certain has never been used.

"But she lets you. I can tell because you happen to be alive and in my kitchen making a very poor excuse for breakfast. JARVIS, tell Agent Romanoff that Agent Barton will meet her in the kitchen for breakfast." Clint examines the man's face despite the cocky grin there is far too much actual intelligence at play behind his eyes to believe that Clint is going to be able to talk his way out of this without revealing something Tony Stark can use at a later date. He shrugs and leans down on the bench. "Oh you're good. I saw that. You almost decided to argue. No. No. You and Romanoff. You're both gonna be interesting."

"Interesting?"

"Yeah. Banner, big fan, always looking for people who get the science juices flowing and well Cap is iconic and the big brother I'll never live up to… you got to have one of those. Now you'd think a God would be more mysterious but Thor he's pretty much an open book and I prefer my books much harder to open and full of technical specs. You and Romanoff though…" he clicks his fingers and points at Clint shaking his head the massive grin never leaving his face, "you make the team tricky. Gotta say I do like tricky."

"The Team?"

"Yeah you got the memo right. Wasn't easy to miss. Aliens attack, we assemble."

"Stark I'm not part of the Initiative."

"Neither was I. Little Red Riding Hood ruled me out."

"She was just doing her job."

"Have a problem with that excuse. Saw some stuff, got held hostage and now the just doing your job thing holds less water," Stark is a little intimidating when he lets the rich guy insanity drop.

"She saved your ass," he says bluntly and flexes his bow fingers beneath the edge of the kitchen bench. Stark raises his eyebrows.

"Sir, Agent Romanoff says that she will be up in a few minutes and she asked that I relay a message."

"Which is?" Stark asks still watching Clint.

"Good morning Mr Stark."

"Thanks J, see what I mean? Tricky." It's hardly tricky to know that Clint wouldn't be demanding Nat's presence in Stark's kitchen. It doesn't take Natasha Romanoff level skills to figure out that Tony Stark was at the head of that particular request. There's no point in further argument. Clint's entirely in Stark's court and Stark's got all the possible paths to retreat blocked off. He's beginning to think Stark had this play on the books before he even came up here to find food. "Nothing? Come on Katniss we're a team give me something to play with." Tony Stark is like a child with three espresso shots and a puppy.

"I'm not on your team Mr Stark. Thank you for the bed and the food but I'm not on any team. I work for SHIELD, I had unfinished business to take care of nothing else." He's not entirely sure he does still work for SHIELD but it'll do for now.

"Almost but not quite." Stark says picking up a slice of cheese and examining it like it would only make sense on a cheese burger. "Taking down Loki was personal for you, yeah, I can see that. But you are still a team player. You didn't go all vigilante; you followed orders and called out patterns. You let someone else actually do the take down and you let SHIELD take the little shit back into custody. Nah you're an Avenger same as the rest of us misfit toys." This is truly worse than a SHIELD psych eval and one of those is probably waiting for him as soon as they pick up their SHIELD cell phones if Nat hasn't already.

Thankfully the elevator doors slide open revealing Natasha in jeans and a leather jacket.

"Barton, Mr Stark, I was summoned." She looks mildly annoyed but Clint knows her well enough to know that it is a show for Stark who would not be satisfied until he had got under her skin.

"Breakfast," he says proffering a slice of tomato. She slides her gaze down him and he can tell she is assessing his injuries and if he has made them worse by walking around.

"I keep telling you that isn't breakfast. We are in New York, dammit this place is full of people whose talents in the breakfast making field far exceed our own and, and this is the important part, they deliver."

"Mr Stark, even though we are indeed in New York I don't believe anyone is willing to deliver through the battleground outside this building," Natasha says smoothly before walking down into the kitchen. Clint doesn't like the way the billionaire's eyes follow the sway of her hips but there isn't anything he can do about it and if he'd chosen a life of knocking out every man who'd looked at Natasha that way he'd never use a bow again.

"I'm insanely wealthy," Stark tosses down.

"We're fine with sandwiches Stark," Clint answers because he can see this going on until lunch time only to be replaced with a similar conversation about lunch. Natasha collects a towel before filling it with ice from the ice machine.

"Teams are meant to be fun," Stark answers, "Isn't that why people play sports? Never been for them much myself but I'm sure they are supposed to be fun."

"Team?" Natasha asks gently pushing Clint on to a stool and placing the makeshift icepack over his knee. Stark watches all with avid fascination. Clint takes the pack and she moves away again giving no indication that she has done anything other than care for her partner's injury.

"Mr Stark is convinced that we are part of his Avengers now."

"I didn't say that but I do like the sound of it Tony Stark's Avengers featuring Tony Stark, Sponsored by Stark Enterprises."

Clint chuckles.

"Hey this one laughs. I thought all you SHIELD drones did was scowl or smile like I'm a difficult child."

"Внешность обманчива," Natasha says softly and Clint catches her eye.

"That wasn't Latin," Stark says narrowing his eyes.

"No it was Russian," Clint answers him but not taking his eyes off Natasha.

"Well I don't speak Russian either what did she say?"

"I said that you can eat this breakfast or not but the SHIELD drones are leaving in forty five minutes," she lies effortlessly. She turns to Clint offering him a brief smile. "I called Fury. They want to debrief. Thor has insisted Loki returns to Asgard for punishment. After that we are on leave."

"Leave?" he asks suspecting it to be code for some horrible Fury devised torture.

"Yeah Barton AWOL without the O."

"Simple as that huh?" he says knowing that it will never be as simple as that.

"Apparently," she says and turns to Stark, "Mr Stark, thank you for your cooperation. I believe Director Fury will be in touch."

"You know the way she thanks me for my cooperation always makes me feel dirty and used," Stark says to Clint. Natasha rolls her eyes. "I think you'll be my favourite master assassin Avenger," he says pointing at Clint then spins himself off the stool. "Can't hang around here all day with you kids I've got stuff to build."


	20. Chapter 20

In the army he was trained to take three minute showers. Even with the pulsing high water pressure of the large Stark owned guest shower he couldn't fight the feeling that any longer than three minutes would result in the water being shut off or a large ugly sergeant with anger management issues. That training had stuck even if they had never successfully rid him of his reliance on his own initiative or his insubordinate streak.

In the boxer briefs from the duffle bag he returned to the bed room to strap his knee and pull on some clothes.

Natasha is sitting on the bed calmly eating the sandwich he had made having first removed the cheese. She holds it with both hands deftly managing the filling that he would have spilt all over the floor. She looks up and continues chewing.

"It's not waffles," he says running the towel over his hair again and wincing at the lack of fluidity in his shoulder joint. She shrugs and swallows.

"You should have strapped that knee before walking on it," she says and though she sounds like she is only providing sensible medical advice Clint can tell she is annoyed.

"Don't like being cooped up. There will be plenty of that waiting for me when we get back to SHIELD."

"We're on leave," she claims again, a small furrow forming between her eyebrows as she speaks.

"Yeah right Tash. I gave vital information to enemy forces. I disabled the helicarrier."

"No one thinks you are responsible for those actions." She puts the sandwich down as she leans forward. She does what he has seen her do a thousand times over, she is calm and she is rational, she just wants to talk about it, hear your side and then in an instant the tables are turned.

"I came to in restraints," he says frustrated. There is no possible way she could believe that SHIELD will be happy to just take him back, no questions asked, no tests done, no angry, angry Hill staring him down across the conference table demanding to know through veiled questions and patronising tones if he enjoyed trying to run her off the road just a little bit.

"A precaution."

"No one is going to welcome me back with open arms. Your say so might work for Captain America. SHIELD's requires a touch more evidence." Now she knows that he knows Captain America, hero for all ages, the boy scout in the stars and stripes jump suit, didn't want him on the team. Now she knows he was down but he wasn't out and he isn't an idiot.

"There was red in your ledger, we wiped it out. We saved the world yesterday." Natasha is glaring now crossing her arms and silently counting how many moves it would take to really hurt him. He wants to hurt her right back. You are not this dumb, he wants to say, this isn't about ledgers. This is about threats and retribution and you pretending it's not isn't helpful.

"Yeah, you think Fury and Hill are gonna buy that?" he rifles through the SHIELD issued duffle bag as he talks pulling out the strapping tape and the surgical steel scissors.

"Yes."

"When exactly did you stop being a cynic?" he asks looking back at her.

"Perhaps it was the same time you decided to take responsibility for magic," she hisses at him.

"Natasha!" he snaps. He shakes his head before setting himself on the edge of the bed. The pain in his knee is fast becoming less of an irritant and more of a count down. He is picking at the edge of the tan adhesive when she reaches out for it.

"I'll do that."

"I can do it," he insists.

"Yes you can," she agrees. "Now let me do it," and she takes the tape from his hand and the lifts his knee pulling it over her own thigh. She begins by running her cool hand along the swelling before beginning to tape across the superior axis of his patella. He watches her certain actions swallowing his frustration. "You felt cooped up so you went to have a chat with Tony Stark?" she says sounding only mildly interested.

"No I limped into a trap. I'm not at my best." He gives her a crooked smile one she most certainly misses as she pretends to focus on the taping of his knee.

"A trap?" she asks before licking her bottom lip quickly.

"Stark seems decided on collecting us all."

"Hmm?" She cuts through the tape and begins taping perpendicularly.

"He is convinced I'm an Avenger now."

"You're not?" she asks still not looking up from her neat work.

"I'm no superhero," he pauses and lifts her chin so he can see her eyes. "I just followed your lead." She looks at him for a moment before cutting the last of the tape.

"You're done. Put some clothes on Barton." So used to their routine close quarters and patch jobs he really hadn't noticed his state of undress.

"Why? I am I distracting you?" he asks cockily.

"Hardly," she answers, "by all means stay that way. It should make the debrief interesting." He is gratified to see a quick smile pull at her lips before she stands to put the aid supplies back in his kit.

"Coulson's face alone might be worth it." Clint yanks a t-shirt from the top before she closes the bag.

"Coulson," she repeats oddly monotone.

"Yeah Tash," he says pulling the t-shirt over his head, "Coulson our handler, snarky yet deceptively pleasant."

"Clint."

"What?"

"Coulson was on the detention level when Loki escaped." Somewhere a note is played, loud, incongruous and distracting.

"Natasha?"

"I don't have the details. Coulson's dead Clint," she says and the note gets louder and screeches like the reverberation in an amplifier.

"What? How?"

"I don't know. I was with you when it happened and then… there was no time to tell you," she looks away her mouth tilting downwards.

"No time," he repeats flatly.

"Clint," she says but how is he supposed to hear her with that ringing note bouncing round the room.

"Yeah. Okay," he nods.

"Clint," she says and she takes a step forward. The note stops. The room is emptied of noise and it is just Natasha and Clint and the absences of noise and of Agent Phil Coulson.

"I asked you." He looks up at her. Her eyes are bright. Her eyes are wide. "I asked you how many agents. That was the time Natasha. That's when you tell me."

"So you can blame yourself. So you can be useless," she says rocking back on her heals and setting her jaw.

"Nice."

"I am not trying to be nice. You do not need nice. You idiot. You did not kill Phil Coulson. Don't do this to yourself." Her face flushes as she speaks.

"The chopper's collecting us from the roof yeah?" he asks blankly and he stands turning his back on her and pulling his jeans on.

"Yes," she answers behind him.

"Okay then." He steps into his boots not bothering with socks or laces.

"So you've decided to march on to your execution now have you?"

"Something like that."

"You'll be disappointed," she says bitterly. He turns to her griping the bags strap tightly in his fist.

"I doubt it."

"Ястреб! Phil Coulson believed in redemption. Clint Barton believes in redemption. I know this because he convinced me." She moves forward stepping in to his personal space with what seems like utter desperation. "If you truly believe that you did these things then you must fight to balance the ledgers." She cups his cheek and helplessly he turns into it. He realizes that her hand is shaking. "Your death metaphorical or otherwise does not do that."

"He's dead," he says.

"Yes and all the punishment in the world will not bring him back," she says softly.

"Oh my god he's fucking dead." And he knows he must sit or the floor will pull him down to it.

"I am sorry Clint," she says as he slumps into her.

"Jesus Christ." He wants to close his eyes. He wants to let his body collapse. He doesn't understand how he is still standing. He does not understand how he can still hear each breath he takes. "I… I don't know. Fuck." He hears himself say nonsensically but she doesn't ask him what he means she only pushes him back down to the bed.

Strangely he thinks about Byron. He wonders if Byron was working yesterday when he carried out an attack on the helicarrier. He wonders if Byron worked on Phil Coulson and if he cleaned up the body and put his ID and phone and service weapon into a plastic bag. He wonders how many agents Byron did the same thing for yesterday.

Natasha slips her hand into his just as she had done the previous afternoon. "How long?" he asks.

"How long?"

"Till the chopper?"

"Twenty seven minutes." He nods. "Clint?" she asks.

"Coulson's not going to be there," he hears himself say.

"No."

He nods.


	21. Chapter 21

There are sentences that shift you on the invisible axis of the world. There are moments when everything that you thought was true is changed forever and the world shimmers and shudders to a halt around the new reality. The last forty eight hours had been an exercise in seeing how many of these sentences, these moments, Clint Barton could withstand.

They sit in silence for the flight, the confined spaces keeping them in close physical proximity. Clint has an inkling that Natasha will not let him be anywhere but within arm's reach though she does not give any outward signs that anything has changed between them. He considers that perhaps nothing has, perhaps in the grief and the trauma he has imagined that she feels something for him too. There is a moment of relief in the notion. If she did not reciprocate in the gloom of the borrowed room, if the kisses were imagined and not real then she is the only solid ground he has left. But it isn't true. He remembers each touch of her hands, her lips, the weight of her against him and he remembers every word she uttered with flash bulb clarity.

In his desperation to have her he has given up the certainty of Natasha Romanoff and he no longer feels sure that it is true that nothing else changes now. Perhaps she had been right all along and a change to them was not to be borne.

He is sure that in some way he had been counting on Phil Coulson. He had been sure that even in returning to SHIELD and the accusations, punishment and suspicion that entailed he would be returning to Phil Coulson. Phil Coulson who would, with even temper and clear eyes, have a deciding vote in his fate.

He is dead.

He is dead because Loki escaped.

Loki escaped because Clint Barton knew exactly where to put an arrow.

Clint Barton had a target and he was an arrow. Nothing but an arrow.

If he could he would let the shame of it overwhelm him. He would let the chopper blur and become meaningless. He cannot though, the metal of his seat, the sound of the rotors, the pressure of Natasha's thigh pressed against his own, all captured with perfect vision. Something keeps him wide awake and fully conscious for every moment.

He marches on to his execution. He marches through the gunmetal corridors ignoring the recognition of each and every person they pass. He marches with Natasha one step behind him. When the door opens it is still a shock that it is Hill and not Coulson who looks up from the table.

"Agent Barton," she nods, "Agent Romanoff you will be debriefed separately. You are not required here."

"I'm staying," Natasha says behind him.

"Romanoff that's an order." Hill narrows her eyes.

"Coulson would have let her stay," he mutters, still standing in the doorway his shoulders rolled back and eyes straight ahead. Hill looks down at her paper work. She has grazes to her temple and the side of her face and Clint remembers as if recalling a slideshow that she was present for the run on the bridge.

"I am conducting this debrief not Agent Coulson." Clint moves to the table, one boot landing a little heavier and quicker on the floor despite Natasha's capable strapping. Natasha is still standing in the doorway. Hill has always argued that his insubordination rubbed off too easily on the young assassin. The senior agent looks up again aggrieved that Natasha has chosen to ignore a direct order. "Agent Coulson will be recovering for some time yet Agent Romanoff. I suggest you start taking my orders as orders."

And the world pivots again. In the time it takes to parse the sentence Clint looks up at Natasha and knows in an instant that she knows nothing of what Hill has just said. There is such a sudden loss of color in her face that he fears for a moment that she will faint. Her lips part, her brow lowers and a sound escapes her like a feral cat.

"Agent Coulson, recovering," Clint asks his head whipping back towards Hill.

"Information provided during an attack is notoriously unreliable," Hill says flatly, "Agent Coulson's injuries were severe but he is not, as was supposed, deceased." Hill is nothing if not professional but her disapproval of her orders bleeds through her control. Clint's fingers dig into his thigh.

"Why were we not told?" Natasha demands her hands contracted into fists.

"You were told now," Hill answers.

"Отвратительно! This was some manipulative ploy, we should have been told," she growls.

"Tash," he warns too shocked to be as angry as he knows he should be. She rounds on him eyes flashing.

"It is one thing to manipulate others… We have a code. They lied to us."

"Director Fury made a decision to delay the relaying of that information during a battle. Agent Romanoff you are dismissed. Question your orders and your superiors on your own time." Hill's own eyes darken as she responds to Natasha's accusation.

"Fury," she spits back, "he did not delay. He used it to force our hands."

"Natasha! You need to stop now. Go. I'll come find you when this is done." He's not sure why she's reacting so badly. Her control is gone and she is every inch the caged lioness he has always taken her for. Yes they lied, but she has lied before for them and not. He feels as if there is no space for his own anger in the same room as her swirling rage and pain. He watches as she forces herself to take a step back instead of forward. She nods once and turns on her heels and is gone.

He turns back to Hill; she raises an eyebrow in askance not of Natasha's reaction but his ability to deal with it. He knows instantly that Hill was most definitely on the side of Strike Team Delta's dissolution.

"Agent Hill," he nods he has no desire to rationalize his partnership to the dark haired agent.

"Agent Barton," she says calmly, "shall we begin?"

It is five hours of the same questions and the inability to explain just what it is like to have a sharp metal object pressed into your chest and without warning or choice to become a sociopath. Hill just taps away at the pad in front of her asking the same questions until Clint wants to reach across the table tug the pad away and tell her he wished he'd managed to shoot her even if that is a lie.

There are things they ask that he cannot answer, why did he miss Fury and Hill? Why did he take on Agent Romanoff in close quarters? Why does he think Selvig was able to build in an off switch? He knows what they are really asking is could he have fought harder.

Something else is at play here and though Hill looks as if she'd love to lock him away in a helicarrier cell and get SHIELD medics to perform brain biopsies she only asks the questions. He doesn't know it's been five hours until he is dismissed with a stack of paper work and a list of different evaluations he'll need to attend before he is allowed back on active duty. He doesn't know it's been five hours because SHIELD debriefs operate like a casino, no clocks and the house always wins.

It is done. It is strangely done. Something and someone higher up than Hill has interceded on his behalf and he is not so sure that he would have asked them to do so. He leaves and he is numb and he may have once been grateful for it but now it is an echo of a Clint Barton who had bright blue eyes and no heart.

He knows where Natasha is without a need to ask or think. He walks straight to the training rooms, the pad still under his arm.

Natasha is on the parallel bars, the simple grey jumpsuit clinging to her curves as she flips herself over them before holding her body perfectly still toes pointed in the air, a straight line drawn down to the crown of her head. She tumbles again her legs separate impossibly and Clint can see the sweat that mars her chest and dampens her hair. He worries she has been tossing her bruised frame for far too long in his absence.

"Natasha?" he calls out and she builds up speed before flipping herself off the bars and landing perfectly. "Tash, how long have you been down here?" She grabs her water bottle leaving milky residue on its surface as she drains its contents. "Have you seen the medics? Did they give the okay for you to be doing this to yourself?" Natasha looks up at him her face giving a clear indication of how little she cares about medicals opinion of her fitness.

"It's been hours."

"Yeah. Paper work." He pulls out the pad to show her. "Questions. Testing. Plus I think Agent Hill really likes my company."

"Hawkeye."

"I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere. Apparently I'm on leave," he answers her unasked question.

"Leave?"

"Yeah. You?" he says simply, dodging the minefield of expectations unmet. In truth he has no idea what to do with the events of the last forty eight hours or the response of SHIELD. Eventually, he supposes, he will need to file through it all and make conclusions for now all he wants is an hour with her and the physical fitness not to have to talk about anything.

"Sitwell debriefed me. Quickly. I think he is scared of me," she pushes the strand of hair that has escaped the pins holding it from her face. Any other day he would expect a quick smile from her one that tells him just how much fun she has terrifying Jasper Sitwell.

"You have a way about you," he says shoving his hands into his pockets.

"So they did not lie about our leave," she says as she turns to put the bottle down and wipe her hands on a nearby towel.

"No," he says, "Tasha, what happened back there?"

"They lied to me. They lied to us," she says her stance altering just enough that she looks ready for a fight.

"Yeah they're assholes. But we've always known that," he agrees.

"This is different."

"Yeah I got that. You on the brink of cutting Agent Hill gave me a good idea that this is different. Why is it different? I mean sure they told us our handler was dead… our friend but… why?"

"You're not angry?" she asks indignantly and he feels it like a slap.

"Fuck! Of course I'm angry. I'm angry about so much right now I feel like I should schedule in time to be angry about each one but… I'm the one who jumps through windows Nat." She blinks once and then twice, collecting her thoughts.

"They didn't tell you your friend was dead. I did that," she says and standing a foot away he can feel the heat radiate off her.

"Is this guilt? You don't have anything to feel guilty about." He shakes his head frustrated.

"I have many things to feel guilty about ястреб." It is a truth they rarely talk about preferring to concentrate on the act of amends.

"This isn't one of them. You know that. What was it?"

"Loki… he said…" Her eyes flicker as she recalls and Clint feels his hands flex wanting to grab her and stand between her and the memory of that fucking psycho.

"Natasha, don't. That… everything he has to say is worth nothing."

"I know," she says softly with an almost helpless shrug. "He said we work for liars and killers."

"Yeah well that my little assassin is the nature of the biz," he tries feeling as if he has taken on the role of Hawkeye in a one act play, there is too much weight here to be his old flippant self.

"He said we pretend we have a code something that makes us different but that it is…" she continues as if she cannot stop the fears from bubbling out of her.

"We aren't Loki, we aren't the Red Room. We are different."

"They told us Coulson was dead. They told us… not just Rogers and Stark… they told us… and I told you. You were barely holding on and I told you. It isn't different." She is right, standing in front of him in the training room of the helicarrier where he cannot go to her, where he cannot hold on to her and remind them both that they remain unchanged, her assessment seems flawless.

"I'm still here Tasha. I'm still here."

"How are we different?" she asks and in her eyes he sees the nineteen year old girl who decided he was worth trusting, he sees a nineteen year old girl he told there was a better way.

"Jesus," he exhales. He runs his hands through his hair. "I'm not the guy to ask. Not right now." He watches her shift as if she has lost the will to fight. "We are different," he insists, "I know what it's like not to care and this isn't it. More than that I can't give you. Not right now. Just come with me. See the medics. That bruise on your calf worries me and … come on… you don't have to trust them just trust me."

He reaches out his hand.

"Trust me Nat," he says again.

_Hello loyal readers and gorgeous reviewers. I uploaded this chapter last night (my Australian EST) but something went wrong I think so I'm uploading again with an extra Russian crib sheet. There was a reason behind no including the translations it goes something like this -The reason why I haven't included the translations is because the need to translate them is in itself part of the story. Don't worry if you didn't get it, chances are Clint didn't quite understand it either and/or he'll translate it later for you or Natasha will. I'm a linguist so whilst my Russian isn't good, I love to play with the lack of one to one translation of words across languages or ideas across cultures. I hope it does what was intended and give the reader another layer of how loving someone is a risk and constantly fraught with never really knowing. _

_But now that we have got past that little reveal here is a translation of the Russian… I'm a Linguist but not a Russian speaker and if you speak Russian and have found my Russian to be deplorable please, please write and I will correct where ever it is needed. _

Дурак = fool or idiot

боже мой = My God, Natasha says this when confronted with the order to retrieve Dr. Banner

Чушь "собачья = equivalent of bull shit

Ебанько малолетнее = adolescent jerk

Вы = you

Мне все равно = I don't care with the clearest translation being that the outcome is all the same.

Мне не важно = I don't care but with the connotation being that the question is unimportant.

Нет = no

Ястреб = Hawk

Бязанный = bound

Ребенок = child with the connotation of brat

Буря = storm

Внешность обманчива = appearance are deceitful. A little further information for those of you not as obsessive about language as I am in Iron man 2 Natasha speaks Latin, though she lies about the translation to Stark, what she does say is "Fallaces sunt rerum species" which come from Seneca and means "The appearances of things are deceptive."

Отвратительно = Disgusting! The interjection rather than the adjective.

And whilst I think you are all definitely smart enough to know these ones just in case you feel a little lazy.

Mea Culpa = Latin for 'I am to blame.'

C'est la vie = French for 'Such is life'

_Please, please, please don't hesitate to write me about anything that annoys you or strikes you as worth mentioning, I would love to hear from you all. Thank you again._


	22. Chapter 22

It's bright in Central Park, far brighter than he feels it has a right to be. He slips on his sunglasses in the car and is grateful for the distance it affords him, the distance it affords him from everyone else. Tash rides shotgun having put Banner's stuff in the back seat and taken out his bow.

He didn't make a thing out of it but only because he is sure that she's put it in the trunk with the rest of their bags. That and the presence of the hunting knife he has strapped his leg beneath his boot. She has another thing coming if she thinks he'll be facing down Loki without a weapon to hand, especially as she has at least one knife on her at all times. He tries not to think how unhelpful being armed was the last time Loki wanted something from him.

Thor had demanded this. Thor had demanded Loki and the Tesseract and Clint knows that the fact that the guy is basically a god would have meant very little had Fury not wanted the damn things off his planet. He could almost imagine the conversation with Thor's booming declarations and half begun threats and Fury blandly declaring he could take them both before Thor could even get up a good head of steam.

As it was the giant man has spent the night keeping vigil over his brother. 'Adopted,' Natasha had pointed out and Clint had thought if this had been all about some ridiculous daddy issues he wanted to hurt the crazy god even more. He may have indulged a few moments of imagining kicking the shit out of the guy and yelling 'Adopted? You little shit try the fucking alternative!' After that he had stopped her not wanting to know any more than he absolutely had to about Thor's little brother. Knowing he had already taken up too much space in his brain.

He hadn't slept much knowing Loki was aboard even with Tasha curled in a tight ball beside him on his bunk. He didn't have much faith in the God of Thunder to control Loki and he'd hoped that Thor's pretty hammer was resting on the shit's chest.

Thor rode to Central park with Selvig and Loki and the guards. Less spectacular than his usual means of transport but Thor seemed delighted to spend time with the physicist. Loki was bound with mystical other worldly chains that Thor assured them negated Loki's magic. His lack of faith was only assuaged when he saw the muzzle and the sour defeated look that peered petulantly from behind it.

Nat hadn't said so out loud but he'd gotten pretty good at reading her and she didn't like him watching them load Loki into the Quinjet. He wasn't certain if she thought he was being masochistic or sadistic but to her credit she did not try to stop him as he glared down on the flight deck and the procession.

He pulls his old jacket from the backseat and puts it on over his hoodie before getting out. The sun may be out but there is still a chill in the air and being around Loki reminds him of a deep internal cold he can't seem to shake.

He is pretty sure the only reason they are here at all is Stark. He's not sure he would have turned it down if SHIELD had offered to let him watch Loki deported in chains and Tasha seems to think it's a good idea that it is witnessed but Thor carting the would be king off in front of Iron Man, Captain America, Dr Banner, Natasha and himself had to be Stark's call. It looks like a half assed attempt at team bonding or pop psychology and only the self-proclaimed playboy philanthropist has that kind of pull or seeming desire to make them his team.

Even so everyone except Thor looks uncomfortable, okay everyone but Thor and Nat who never lets herself look uncomfortable in public. And Thor well it seems that he has two modes: Battle and Jovial. The Prince of Asgard is used to everyone working around him.

It's only been a day, so while Banner was Hulked out and Rogers has those super steroids and Thor's a fucking deity his knee is still strapped as all get out and Natasha has deftly covered that cut and bruise on her forehead with makeup. There is no excuse for Tony Stark looking so healthy other than the guy is wearing makeup too. He scans the gathering and realizes he'd be making snarky comments to Natasha about it on any other day.

He wants to ask her, Hey Nat, how long is this feeling gonna last? I feel like an imposter in my own life. How long is everything gonna be judge against what I would do on any other day? but the question dies in his mouth.

Natasha is at his elbow as they walk and he honestly doesn't know why anymore. He asked her to trust him and she didn't say that she did she just took his hand and followed him. He felt like they had returned to that first day, both injured and angry and not sure who to trust. She hasn't left him since.

I'd think I was on suicide watch Tasha but you seem to need me as much as I need you. It makes me ache you know? Not just the bruising and the bunged up knee, that this is so broken. I wanted it to be so different. The day I told you I loved you… it was supposed to be different, it was supposed to be more, more light, more heat. I… what if I have even less to offer you now?

There was a time before you Natasha when I didn't have silent conversations with you in my head. There was a time before you when it was just me alone in here.

They haven't talked.

And I was grateful for the silence Nat. There was so little left to say, so few words left to say it with but… well, I thought the silence was going to get filled up with the… fuck Tasha… I thought there would be silence because our mouths would be too busy with each other. I thought our hands were going to be too busy with each other's skin. But you just snuck into my bunk and curled up in it, a mess of exhaustion and rage and pain killers for your cracked ribs. Dammit Tasha, cracked ribs and you're flinging yourself round on the parallel bars.

He'd repaired arrows letting the ritual and the repetition soothe him where sleep could not.

Nat you sleep like you are angry at it. Always have. And when you woke up you looked at me like you hated me. It was only a moment and it faded from your eyes as quickly as you woke but I'd be lying if I said it hadn't scared the fuck out of me.

I don't ask you about your dreams. Once early on when you'd woken suddenly, in a safe house that never got warm and smelled like old socks, I was going to but you turned your eyes on me and sucked the air from my lungs. Spies, good spies, don't wake up from dreams like they do in the movies. There is no struggle, no tossing or calling out because the people you pretend to be don't have reason to have the dreams that would cause such a reaction. Even if you have every reason Natasha, you are an amazing spy.

It wasn't that I didn't care. It was that there was nothing I could do about the things that haunted you. And you have always preferred the scars and callouses to the debriding of talking about them.

They're standing in a loose circle around the two gods. Thor looks up in acknowledgement and Clint assumes its some sort of brothers forged in the heat of battle thing. Loki looks… pissed and he grinds down on his teeth wanting to reach for his knife and is forcing himself to stay still. He is caught between at ease and at attention and he is unable to take his eyes off the pale man with the oddly blue eyes. He hides behind his glasses and holds back the inarticulate fury beneath the surface.

Natasha leans in. He sees her move from the corner of his eye and catches vanilla and bergamot on the air.

"Let it go Clint," she says, a husky whisper easily dispersed by the wind, "He doesn't get to rule the world and you get to rock mine."

He grins.

"A requiem played as you begged for forgiveness

"Don't touch me," I screamed, "I've got unfinished business!"


End file.
